


Love Is For Children

by Spockavenger (Maigen1266)



Series: Queer Verse [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Gen, Minor Laura Barton/Barney Barton, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Minor Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes/Peggy Carter/Howard Stark, Minor Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Past Natasha Romanov/Alexi Shostakov - Freeform, Past Natasha Romanov/Clint Barton - Freeform, Trans Female Character, Trans Pepper Potts, Trans Steve Rogers, aro ace character, discussion of poly relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 14:39:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maigen1266/pseuds/Spockavenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of SHIELD Natasha takes a trip down memory lane to find who she is now that every mask and cover was gone. At least all the ones SHIELD knew about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clint

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing around with this world for a long while, and it's mostly canon compliant (I'm ignoring AoU as hard as possible), and none of the character are cishet.  
> This fic is my contribution to the [Natasha Romanoff Big Bang](http://romanoffbigbang.tumblr.com/), and is accompanied by a [mix](http://8tracks.com/atsadi/love-is-for-children-romanoff-big-bang-2015) that I'm super excited about by [Atsadi](http://atsadi.tumblr.com/) and art by [Shire-Kaiju](http://shire-kaaiju.tumblr.com).  
> My sister is owed a huge thanks for doing some last minute betaing last night.

Natasha left the cemetery and immediately pulled her phone from her pocket. Her first order of business was to explain to Clint that she was going underground and would have to ditch the last of her burner phones.  
For once in his life Clint responded immediately with another text.  
_Meet me at the old place. Two days_  
At least he was being subtle for the moment. He rarely proved that he was capable of it.

\---

New York was still recovering from the Chitauri Invasion, Manhattan had mostly recovered, but very little else had. The poorest neighborhoods were the ones still most badly affected. The long defunct SHIELD base under Harlem was almost impassible. It had been abandoned and closed up shortly after Natasha joined SHIELD in 2004. Clint and Natasha had used it as a meeting point several times over the years.  
Natasha knew that Clint would be meeting her here, because this was the base that Clint brought her to when he chose to recruit her instead of killing her.  
\------  
“How old are you anyways?” Hawkeye asked from behind her. Natasha didn’t turn to look at him, she just kept walking, her arms behind her where Hawkeye could see.  
“’Cause you look like you’re about 12,” Hawkeye continued.  
“I’m considerably older than 12,” she told him quietly.  
“Yeah? 14 then?”  
“Older,” Natasha allowed herself to smile just a little. The man was loud and chatty, but she found herself liking him all the same.  
“Huh,” Hawkeye said and Natasha thought she could hear a grin in his voice. It was possible she was imagining it, but she doubted it.  
“Do you want to keep guessing?” Natasha asked.  
“Nah, why don’t you just tell me,” Hawkeye said casually. There was a rustling of fabric. Perhaps he was readjusting his bow for better carrying, or perhaps he was putting his arrow back in the quiver. Either way he didn’t seem ready to betray his word.  
“20,” Natasha said simply.  
This whole time she had been careful about her accent, keeping it as American as possible. She could pass for an Australian or a Londoner most days, but Hawkeye had found her, even knew a little bit about Black Widow’s assassinations in the region, she couldn’t afford to let him question her origins. If she sounded like an American he was less likely to think to question if she was from another country.  
\------  
Clint was waiting in what used to be the cafeteria. There were still a couple of tables bolted to the floor left from then the base was in operation. SHIELD had all the funding in the world, who wanted to bother unbolting all those tables just to move them across the city and bolt them to a new floor?  
Clint was sitting on top of one of the tables munching calmly on a sub. There was an opened can of Coke on the table next to him on one side, and on the other was his bow and a quiver of arrows.  
“So, Hydra,” Clint said simply in between bites of his sandwich.  
“Hydra,” Natasha agreed.  
“We gonna do something about it?” Clint asked and knocked back the last of his Coke, then tossed the can behind him onto another table. It rolled across the table and fell on the floor.  
“I think Steve’s got a handle on the Hydra angle. He’s looking for his dead boyfriend,” Natasha said as she swung herself onto the table next to Clint.  
“I thought you said he had his eyes on that flyguy,” Clint said. He shoved the last bite of his sandwich in his mouth and crumbled up the paper. He threw it behind him as well. It landed precisely where the Coke can had just a minute before.  
“Oh, I’m still pretty sure he does,” she said. “But you know, I’m pretty sure he and Bucky Barnes were an item back in the day.”  
“Bucky, like ‘Bucky Bear’ Bucky?” Clint asked. He paused for a second, “Yeah, okay, I can see that. So why’s he looking for him?”  
“Turns out he’s the Winter Soldier.”  
Clint just whistled, but that was all the response needed.  
\------  
Natasha hadn’t been given a choice over whether or not to go to medical after her mission. She got shot through the abdomen and although he had missed every single major organ, that still bled like crazy and if things moved around apparently she could damage something worse. Like she hadn’t already known that.  
Her first visitor was none other than Clint Barton. In the last two years he had gone from awkward recruiter to awkward coworker to friend with the hint of maybe something more. It made her think of romance movies. The really terrible ones that Hollywood churned out three a year, the ones where the two unlikely people fall in love and live happily ever after.  
She didn’t believe in happily ever after.  
Clint did.  
“Hey, you doing okay?” he asked as he stepped swiftly into the room. He looked worried, and Natasha did not know how to deal with that emotion. Of course she could pander to him and act weak, or she could act macho like nothing was wrong, but she didn’t know how not to act when faced with that kind of worry.  
“I’m fine, would have just gone home if Coulson hadn’t made me come into medical before my debrief,” Natasha replied. Truth maybe, or some fraction of the truth which Clint could accept seemed the answer.  
Clint did not look convinced that Natasha was fine, but he didn’t argue about it either. Instead he sat on the edge of Natasha’s bed and grabbed up her hand.  
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Clint said softly, then louder, “Coulson wants me in on your debrief, said the guy who shot you might be important.”  
“Yeah, he’s important,” Natasha shifted her hand in Clint’s grip. He looked down at their hands and then at Natasha’s face. He gave her an almost shy smile, and she found herself returning it.  
\------  
Natasha and Clint left together from the base. They didn’t really have a plan, but Clint put forward the idea of just going up to the farmhouse. Fury, Hill, and Coulson were the only ones in SHIELD who had known about it or the people who lived there, and it seemed a safe drop off before going down into the underworld for papers and to hack into the necessary systems to set Natasha up with a new cover.  
They were in an old clunker pickup halfway across the country when Clint brought up the Winter Soldier again.  
“So both guys, they were the same guy?”  
Natasha just looked at him.  
“I mean the guy who shot you is the same guy as back in Russia. Right?”  
“Yeah, apparently all of the above are Bucky Barnes,” Natasha said bitterly and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.  
“Well, good news, you totally banged a famous dude,” Clint said with that dumb smile he always had when he didn’t know what to say or what he was doing.  
“You say that like he’s the only one,” Natasha shoved some cheer into her voice. She knew Clint wasn’t going to be convinced, but it was good enough.  
Clint was still wearing a dumb smile, but it was the smug one now, so Natasha let it go.  
\------  
“Hey, Natasha?”  
Clint and Natasha were in bed in the tiny apartment that Natasha was provided by SHIELD. Natasha had been drifting off when Clint spoke.  
“Yeah, Clint?”  
“Why do we keep doing this?”  
“The sex?”  
“Yeah”  
Natasha paused and thought about it for a moment.  
“I guess because once we started there didn’t seem like a reason to stop,” Natasha said.  
“Yeah, but you never seem to enjoy it,” Clint said.  
Natasha paused again.  
“I guess I don’t,” Natasha’s voice was barely even a whisper, like she didn’t want to admit it.  
“That’s okay,” Clint said and wrapped his arm around Natasha and pulled her close. She settled her head against his chest. “You don’t like it, we quit, simple as that.”  
\------  
The farmhouse was out in the middle of nowhere for a good reason: its owner was a wanted man.  
Barney Barton was standing outside the house with his arms crossed and a scowl on when Natasha pulled up the truck and parked it.  
“What the hell did you get yourself into this time Clint?” Barney asked once Clint had made it out of the truck. Barney’s hands twitched in what seemed a reflexive manner as he spoke.  
“Well, apparently the super not-so-secret organization I worked for was actually super secretly a Nazi organization,” Clint said with a vague shrug of his shoulders. His hands were twitching too and Natasha rolled her eyes.  
“Just use your damn hands already,” she said, “It’s not like I won’t know what you’re saying.”  
The two men devolved into a flurry of signing that basically boiled down to: Clint was an idiot, Barney was an asshole for not even trying to call after New York, and yes, Natasha and Clint could stay for a week or two as they got their feet back under them.  
Barney led the way into the house. Clint and Natasha’s legs were promptly wrapped into the vice-like hugs of small children. There were two of them, a little boy and girl. They were Barney’s children and neither Clint nor Natasha had ever quite figured out how Barney had not only found a girlfriend, he had married her and they were procreating.  
“Uncle Clint!” Sarah yelled happily as she clutched her uncle’s legs. Her older brother, Michael, was wrapped like a limpet around Natasha’s right leg.  
Clint crouched down and lifted Sarah with a grin. She hugged his neck and Natasha wondered if perhaps Sarah was capable of choking a man to death. Clint certainly looked like he was lacking in air.  
Natasha crouched down to Michael’s level as well and gave the boy a genuine smile.  
“Hey little boy, have you been behaving for your parents?” Natasha’s hands moved as she spoke. It was an old habit she had never broken.  
\------  
“I’m deaf,” Clint said clutching his ear.  
“Temporarily?” Natasha asked moving in to look at his bleeding ear. There was a small hearing aid tucked deep into the ear and Natasha supposed that this was not a temporary thing, simply one of the secrets which Clint had not entrusted in her.  
“You’re too close, I can’t read your lips from here,” Clint said just a tad too loudly. Only one ear was bleeding, but it seemed obvious that the other hearing aid must also be broken for Clint not to hear her at all. But then, it was an EMP that had gone off in his face.  
Natasha backed up a step and Clint gave one of his nervous little half grins and a thumbs up. Natasha nodded before speaking just a little slower than normal, taking the effort to ensure that Clint could read each word.  
“What do I need to do to help with the aids?” Natasha asked.  
“Nothing really, just help me clean off the blood from this one,” Clint said lifting his hand and letting Natasha get a better look at it.  
She couldn’t see the source of the blood, but she assumed it was somewhere deeper in his ear, she instead pulled off the Widow’s Bite on her right arm and used the soft fabric of the sleeve underneath in order to clean the blood around his ear. Much was of it was already starting to dry, and it didn’t seem like more was coming.  
Natasha stepped away again when the majority of the blood had been wiped away.  
“What caused the bleeding?” she asked.  
“When the EMP knocked it out it caused a little spark inside the aid, that cracked a seam and when I went to pull it out it scraped up my inner ear pretty bad. Nothing too major, just a deep scratch,” Clint explained patiently and calmly.  
“Is the other one damaged as well?”  
“No, I don’t think that one cracked, just the inside is fried, but I didn’t want to try to pull it out like the other one just in case,” he said.  
There was a pause in the conversation.  
“We’ll need a safe place until we can get a secure line to SHIELD,” Natasha finally said to break the silence.  
“I know a place.”  
\------  
“Yeah, I’ve been really good. But, Aunt Tasha, Mommy was teaching me and Sarah how to make little pouches to keep in the drawers and we made one for you,” Michael told Natasha with a huge grin splitting his face.  
“What does it smell like, little one?” Natasha asked gently.  
\------  
“What is this place?” Natasha asked as Clint pulled the car up the long country drive.  
Clint didn’t look away from the road, and he didn’t respond. Natasha looked over and saw the little broken aid stuck in his ear still and sighed. He, of course, had not heard her.  
There was a long moment of silence as the car rolled up the dirt road. At the end was a farmhouse and a little ways away an old barn. Clint parked the car and sat staring up at the farmhouse for a very long moment before he finally turned to look at Natasha. He had an odd expression on his face which Natasha had never seen before. It was some kind of mixture of guilt and reluctance and happiness. It was such an odd combination that she didn’t even know what she might say to the man beside her who had somehow become more important than anyone had been in a very very long time, perhaps in her whole life.  
“Come on, we should ring the doorbell before he sees us out here,” Clint said and turned away from her before she could ask who would see them.  
Clint grabbed up his bow and quiver from the back seat of the car, but slung the bow over his shoulder casually, as though he had no intention of using it. Natasha, following his lead, left her Widow’s Bites on, and the pistols holstered on her thighs. If Clint was walking around a farmyard wearing tactical gear with a bow slung over his shoulder, then there was no reason why Natasha shouldn’t leave herself armed as well.  
When Clint rang the doorbell, Natasha still didn’t know what to expect out of the residents of the house. But whatever she was expecting it definitely wasn’t a young woman with a little boy under the age of two on her hip.  
“Who are you?” the woman asked looking suspiciously at the two armed people looking worse for the wear at her door.  
“Is Barney here?” Clint asked instead of answering.  
“He’s out in the barn, who are you?” the woman was speaking quickly and looking away from Clint and towards the old looking barn a short distance away.  
Clint didn’t respond and the woman looked back at him. She had sharp eyes, and now she carefully took in every detail of the two of them. As she did Natasha took an inventory herself. Clint had blown out hearing aids, a scraped up inner ear, what looked like a lovely bruise forming on his jaw, three long tears in his pants, and the laces of his boots looked singed. Natasha’s hair was knotted and tangled in a million different directions, her left wrist was swollen and red, and there was a series of little scrapes on the palms of both her hands from where she had to catch herself.  
They were in a sorry state and anyone could see it.  
The woman finished her examination and looked again at Clint. She studied his face for an impossibly long moment. Then she finally stepped out of the doorway and gestured for her two guests to come inside.  
“I’ll get Barney,” she said.  
\------  
“Mommy says it smells like lilacs and apples,” Michael said proudly, his grin never wavering an inch.  
“Wow, those are some of my favorites,” Natasha said in a quiet voice, to make Michael think that she was confiding in him a great secret.  
“That’s awesome!”  
“It is,” Natasha said in a steady voice of agreement. Then she stood and offered her hand to the almost seven year old. “How about we go get the smelly pouch you made for me?”  
Michael nodded enthusiastically and dragged her further into the house. Natasha could feel that Clint, Barney, and Sarah made no moves to follow, but then, she was such a regular to the Barton farmhouse that Barney had joked more than once that she was a permanent resident.  
\------  
When the woman returned to the house she bustled into the kitchen and brought Clint and Natasha a cup of water apiece and an oversized first aid kit, which looked like it would pop open at any minute, because it was simply too full.  
As Natasha broke open the kit to bandage her wrist (the worst treatable injury between them), the door into the house opened again and a man walked into the room.  
He was far more what Natasha had expected when Clint brought her somewhere secret and worried that they would be seen by the inhabitant. He was a little taller than Clint, he was bulkier in many places than her partner, but all the same he had a resemblance to Clint which was unmistakable. They had the same chin, the same eyes, and they held themselves similarly, in a sort of affected casually cool.  
“Clinton Francis Barton,” he said as he stepped fully into the room and into Clint’s eye line. Clint offered one of his apologetic smiles, but he didn’t speak. He held the man’s gaze for a long moment before lifting his hands. The man lifted his hands and started gesturing wordlessly. It took Natasha only a short moment to realize that the man was using some form of sign language and that Clint’s eyes were tracking every movement and facial gesture of the man in front of him carefully, as though he was afraid to miss something.  
There was silence in the room before the little boy who had been released from his mother’s custody at some point said loudly, “Daddy, what are you doing with you face?”  
Clint laughed loudly at that and the man smiled and gestured for the boy to come to him.  
“Michael, this is your Uncle Clint,” the man said calmly, “He’s deaf and when he doesn’t have in his hearing aids it’s really hard for him to understand what we’re saying. So I’m using sign language to talk to him and part of sign language is the face you make.”  
“Oh,” Michael said slowly as he turned to look at Clint who made an effort to smile when Michael turned around. “Well, then I should learn that so I can talk to Uncle Clint, too.”  
The man’s face lit up with a huge grin, which contagiously had Michael, Clint, and the woman grinning as well.  
So of course it was at that moment that the first aid kit slid off Natasha’s lap and hit the floor with a loud clatter.  
The man looked guilty and hurried over to help Natasha gather up everything from the ground.  
“I’m sorry, that was rude of me to ignore you,” the man offered once everything had been gathered up. He was not entirely facing Natasha, but partially facing the rest of the room, and he signed with his hands as he spoke.  
“That’s alright, I needed to get my wrist bandaged anyways,” Natasha said and gestured a little with the newly bandaged wrist.  
“Yes, well, I am the host though,” the man said. He then offered his hand to Natasha, and when she took it he said, “I’m Barney Barton, Clint’s my little brother.”  
\------  
Natasha and Clint had been in residence at Barney’s place for almost two weeks when Clint’s burner phone finally rang.  
On their long drive to the farmhouse Clint had picked up a burner phone and used it to contact someone he had worked with on a number of jobs back in the day before he started working for SHIELD. Clint arranged for his old acquaintance to create new documents for the newest of Natasha’s many covers. The call that came two weeks later was to inform him that everything Clint requested was ready and whenever Clint wired him the money, he could come and pick up the documentation.  
Well, that was easier said than done.  
“There’s no way that truck is making it all the way to Nevada,” Barney said looking at the junker in question the day after Clint received the call.  
“Well, we need it to, so we can ditch it near the city and pick up a new car. If we leave it here the purchase might be tracked to me, the car traced here, and then you’ll be in jail. Again,” Clint’s hands moved as he spoke. The whole Barton family had gotten into the habit of signing as they spoke whenever Clint was around. In fact they did it without thinking sometimes even when Clint wasn’t around and it was just Natasha.  
“You can just ditch it the next town over, this hunk of junk is not gonna make it across multiple states,” Barney said.  
“It already did,” Clint said. He was looking stubborn and sullen like a six year old who had been told he was not allowed to play the way he wanted.  
“And it’s a goddamn miracle it did!” Barney said. He then sighed and continued, “I’ll see if my neighbor can fix it up a little and you can at least make it halfway to where you’re going before you have the ditch the car because it won’t run.”  
Clint nodded, but he was still looking sullen and Natasha knew there’d be no living with him for the rest of the day. So instead of spending any more time with the brothers she instead found Laura, Barney’s wife, and sat down with her for some tea.  
Laura was a lovely woman, and one who took no shit from the men in her life. And between Barney, Clint, and Michael, there was a lot of shit for her not to take.  
\------  
Michael careened through the living room, buck naked, screaming as Clint chased him with a Nerf crossbow in hand. Barney raced after them with a battle cry of some kind not three seconds behind Clint.  
Laura and Natasha had been in the middle of putting away the first aid kit when the boys came racing through. In the process Clint knocked the open kit off the table and Barney ran across what had fallen which popped open no less than three different tubes.  
The boys kept running until Laura stood and cleared her throat. Barney stopped on a dime, Michael skidded to a halt across the wooden floors and seeing the other two men stop, Clint slid into the back of the couch. Laura didn’t say a single word. She looked at her husband, then her naked son, then the floor now covered in a mix of Neosporin, icy hot, and bandages.  
Barney shuffled to grab Michael. He pliantly allowed his father to pick him up and carry him out of the room. Clint climbed around the couch and started gathering up the first aid kit.  
Laura looked to Natasha and gave her a soft smile.  
“Would you like some tea?”  
\------  
“How have you been?” Laura asked as she stirred a pitcher of iced tea.  
“Well, I was pretty busy with work up until a couple weeks ago, what with Hydra and everything,” Natasha said casually, as though she wasn’t talking about covert spy operations.  
“Yes, it was all over the news,” Laura replied.  
Natasha was stunned sometimes with how casual Laura could be about what Natasha and Clint did for their jobs. Of course, it may have something to do with the fact that her husband was an ex-carney and an ex-con. No doubt Barney’s stories were just as eventful as anything that her brother-in-law and Natasha had ever gotten up to. Well, Barney’s stories probably didn’t include aliens or superheroes, but everything else was probably on the same level.  
“Well, Steve doesn’t do quiet as well as Clint or I,” Natasha said.  
“Steve, that’s Captain America, right?” Laura asked.  
“Yeah, that’s him. Freedom and the American Way,” Natasha said with a smirk. Laura smiled with her and passed her a glass of iced tea.  
“So you’ve been working with him while Clint was out of the game?”  
“Yeah, Steve and a STRIKE team,” Natasha said, then slowly added, “who all turned out to be Hydra.”  
“Well, you took all of them down by the looks of what you dumped on the internet,” Laura said. “I’ve been reading a lot of it, some the US government has tried to cover up again, but what I’ve seen…well, we all owe you all for what you did.”  
“Clint would have helped out, but he says his hearing aids were out and he forgot to put his phone on vibrate,” Natasha said with a shrug. She didn’t actually doubt Clint’s story, it wouldn’t have been the first time that Clint forgot to put his hearing aids in, but she was a little irritated that he managed to miss two whole days of texts and calls in between dealing with Hydra and the Winter Soldier and almost getting killed repeatedly.  
“Well, that certainly sounds like Clint,” Laura acknowledged and sipped at her tea.  
Out of nowhere it occurred to Natasha that this was one of those apple-pie-American moments some of her fellows in the Red Room had been programmed for. She was intended for other things.  
\------  
Paris was beautiful when lit at night. Her hotel room even had a view of the Eiffel Tower, not that she would be there to see it.  
No, instead she was on top of a building on the other side of the city listening in on a conversation between several intelligence leaders from different countries across the globe. Last night she had spent trying to cozy up on one of said intelligence leaders at a charity gala put on by none other than Howard Stark. The leader had made her and she had had to scramble to intercept the new location for this meeting afterwards. She had counted on being able to grab the location from his communicator, but he simply would not be seduced.  
The window Natalia was peering through was almost two stories above the men who were speaking loudly on the ground floor. She was using a listening device, but the sound still wasn’t clear enough to really listen in. But she couldn’t even attempt to sneak in, every entrance was well guarded and not a single window could be opened from the outside without breaking it. This was meant to be a quiet mission and it had gone sideways from the very beginning.  
“…bombs on…not going well…maybe…” Natalia was only getting every fifth word or so, there was no way she could possibly get any real intel from this situation, but if she went back to the motherland empty-handed she would be punished to the furthest extent.  
Perhaps she could take out the man at the South entrance, he looked the smallest and least armed of the lot, it might be worth it.  
It wasn’t.  
1965 was not a good year.  
\------  
When Clint and Natasha climbed back into the old truck Barney had his arms crossed and was looking at them sternly, Laura was smiling with Sarah on her hip waving enthusiastically. Michael chased after the truck for a little bit before waving and running back to his parents where he started signing rapidly as he spoke to his father.  
“Michael’s signing has gotten much better, hasn’t it?” Natasha said as they pulled out onto the empty country road leading to the Barton farmhouse.  
“Yeah, Laura’s been taking him to lessons after school apparently,” Clint said. He was looking broodily out the window as he drove. Natasha simply nodded and looked out her window.  
“Barney says his hearing is getting worse,” Clint said after a long pause.  
“Barney’s?”  
“No, Michael. Apparently my deafness isn’t just injury related,” Clint said quietly. No wonder he was brooding. Natasha had seen Clint brood over a lot of things, but situations surrounding his lack of hearing were the worst.  
“I see, that’s why Laura’s taking him to classes then?” Natasha asked.  
“Yeah, Sarah goes too, apparently,” Clint said.  
Natasha nodded and they lapsed into silence again.  
\------  
“You must learn this,” Madame said sternly. She was a woman who seemed made of stone or metal, her back was always perfectly straight, and her expression was always stern and disapproving. Natalia had spent years trying to gain her approval, but at 14 years old, she had finally given up.  
“Yes, Madame,” Natalia said avoiding Madame’s eyes. The older woman was her language instructor. Natalia spoke Russian and English, of course, but now Madame was shoving Chinese, French, Spanish, and German down her throat. It was French which was escaping her this morning and she did not know why she could not remember the French word for disappointment, but perhaps it was the sentence as a whole which was throwing her off. After all, ‘I am a disappointment to my teachers’ was not the most encouraging sentence to be forced to repeat over and over again.  
\------  
The truck gave out around Austin. They were taking a circuitous route to Reno, Nevada where their contact was waiting for them. There was a short debate before Natasha won out and they bought a used car for five thousand dollars. They paid in cash and drove off with an old Volkswagon bus that seemed to have been around since the 70s.  
\------  
“Oh, I’m sorry, I totally just ruined your vest,” Natasha said pitching her voice high to make her youth and innocence seem more clear. She wasn’t a fan of the yellow sunglasses she pushed up onto her head as she spoke, they limited her vision, but she would simply have to work around them.  
“It’s no problem, young lady,” the General replied looking as stiff as ever.  
“Oh, no, but I just got my coffee all over you,” Natasha continued reaching out as if to wipe him off. He was smarter than that and moved away from her.  
“Please, let me help somehow, I bet I could get that stain out with a bit of water,” Natasha offered. She didn’t have to fake the desperation in her voice. If she failed at this mission her handlers in the Motherland would not take favorably to her. She wanted to get away, but she hadn’t had a clear opportunity yet. Besides, what would she do without the KGB?  
“It’s quite alright, ma’am, I’m sure the missus will get it out just fine,” the General replied and Natasha’s heart sank. She’d have to just stab him and melt into the crowd. If he wasn’t dead before the end of the day…well, then she might be.  
Natasha reached out again as if to help, not allowing him to move out of her way this time, she kept pushing until her hand was against the stain. Then she flicked the knife hidden in her long sleeve out and into his heart.  
“I’m sorry General Phillips,” she said quietly and melted off into the crowd before he could even fall to the ground.


	2. Russia

The exchange of cash for new documents went easily. Their contact wasn’t followed, nor did he betray them and by the end of the day they had traded in their car and bought a new one, with cash, and driven to Las Vegas.  
They posed as a married couple as they checked into a hotel attached to the airport. They bickered over Clint’s supposed gambling problem as they booked a ticket to London, and they kissed and made up as they waited for their plane.  
As they got off the plane in London they shed the married couple cover for one as siblings. Natasha pulled on a blond wig she had retrieved from a stash in Las Vegas, and Clint exchanged his hearing aids for clunkier ones for their disguises. Natasha spent a lot of time translating ASL for people at their new hotel as part of their cover. Natasha was the younger sister who hadn’t even wanted to come, but had been forced to in order to translate for her deaf brother.  
They kept their tourist covers for over a week before one night Clint came out of the bathroom to find Natasha was packing her things.  
“You’re leaving me then?” Clint asked rubbing his towel through his hair.  
“I need to do some self-discovery. You should head back to New York, Stark will take you in, or you could get a new apartment if you wanted to,” Natasha told him calmly. Clint was just out of the shower so Natasha signed as she spoke, just to keep everything clear.  
Clint nodded slowly.  
“I knew it was coming. Was hoping it wouldn’t, but you’ll do what you need to. I saw one of the identities you created. I know where you’re going,” Clint said.  
“Thank you for understanding,” Natasha said, “I’ll call when I get back to the US.”  
\------  
She had been married three years when she was informed that her husband had died in a test flight.  
Or she had been married a year.   
That time period was foggy. Either she had been married three years and she was a ballerina with the Bolshoi, or she had been married one and she was a premier assassin of the Red Room.  
“I’m very sorry Comrade Shostakova,” the General was not sincere, Natalia knew that much at least.  
“Alexi was a hero of the Motherland,” Natalia said woodenly. She paused. “Allow me to take his place. I wish to be of assistance to the Motherland.”  
“We would be most appreciative of your assistance Comrade,” the General replied.  
A small part of Natalia was recoiling in horror from putting herself back into service for the Soviet Union, she had almost escaped it with her wedding to Alexi.  
\------  
The gravestone was a very simple one. Many years ago she had requested that Natalia Shostakova be buried beside her husband. At the time neither had been dead, but neither of them were the people they had been before either. The marriage had been arranged in order to give her purpose to follow the USSR and as a reward for her service to the Motherland.  
Natasha had long since left behind the woman who had been convinced by machine and hypnosis that she loved the young astronaut, Alexi Shostakov. In fact, Natasha had managed to kill that girl and the woman she was brainwashed into by the early 80s. Around then she began working for herself.   
When Clint picked her up she allowed him to think that she was 20, but that was far from the truth. The truth was, when Clint took her in she was 76.  
\------  
“I bet the 70s were great,” Clint said with a little wistful sigh as he sat backwards on the couch. His head was brushing the floor and his legs were up over the back of the couch. It was a common enough position to find Clint in, the proof was in the multitude of holes in the ceiling from darts, pencils, and arrows.  
“Not really, I killed an American general and infiltrated Stark Industries in the 70s,” Natasha said with a tired yawn. They had been drinking themselves stupid for hours, and, well, it wasn’t that surprising that something would finally slip after years of living with Clint.  
“Huh?” Clint looked at her stupidly.  
“General Phillips I think, can’t remember why he was a target. I sent his family a fruit basket for Christmas every year since I defected to SHIELD,” Natasha told him sobering up now. They had ended their relationship as a couple almost a year ago, but Clint was still the person whose opinion was most important to her.  
“I tried to shoot my teacher when I left the circus, he and my brother left me beaten half to death. They thought I was dead, I think,” Clint told her his face serious for all the bright red color from the way he was hanging upside down.  
“What was that about Stark Industries, though?” Clint said after a long silence that seemed like it would stretch into infinity.  
“Oh, well Howard Stark was a weapons manufacturer, well, the weapons manufacturer for the US, and Russia wanted his weapons plans, they sent me in to seduce Stark, which failed, so they had him killed instead,” Natasha told him. She was quickly becoming sober. Her metabolism was too fast to keep her properly drunk for long, and since she had stopped drinking, her head was clearing rapidly.  
“Wait, so Russia had Stark Senior killed?”   
“Maybe, there was someone else involved, but I was never told who. And he wasn’t killed until almost twenty years later,” Natasha admitted quietly.  
“We need to tell SHIELD,” Clint said.  
“We can’t, if we do, SHIELD will know just how old I am, and just how close Russia got to a super-soldier serum in the forties and fifties,” Natasha said.  
Clint finally rolled himself off the couch and sat up in order to look Natasha straight in the eyes.  
“What would SHIELD do if they knew about you?”   
“I don’t know, and that’s what worries me.”  
\------  
Natasha stood over the gravestone of her ex-husband and mourned him briefly. He may not have died on the date on his gravestone, but he did die later while defending Natasha from the Russian government which wanted one of their greatest assets back.  
“Who are you?” a voice demanded as Natasha turned from Alexi’s grave. It was an older woman speaking to her and leaning heavily on a cane.  
“I’m visiting the grave of someone I knew a long time ago,” Natasha replied calmly.  
The old woman looked past Natasha and furrowed her brows when she saw the gravestones behind the younger looking woman.  
“Alexi and Natalia Shostakov? They died long before you were born little girl,” The woman said, her eyes squinting through the dimness of dusk in an attempt to see Natasha’s face between her hat and the thick scarf around her neck.  
“I knew them,” Natasha said simply as she stepped aside to let the woman past her. As she moved the wind picked up and unwound her scarf from around her lower face. Natasha wrapped it around again, but the damage was done, the woman had seen her face.  
“Natalia,” the old woman breathed and reached for Natasha. Natasha stepped away, her past could not catch her if she did not allow it.  
“My brother’s wife, the ballerina,” the woman breathed out again. Natasha stopped her efforts to get away and went limp with surprise. Natasha wasn’t even sure she had ever met Alexi’s younger sister, but the Red Room rewrote her memories so many times in those days there was no way to know what did, or did not, happen.  
“…Inna Shostakova?” Natasha asked slowly the name coming to her as if through water.  
“Yes, yes, no longer Shostakova, but I am Inna. You are Natalia,” Inna said her face lit up and excited. It would take an incredibly talented person to be able to fake the level of emotion that this old woman was showing. Natasha would not let herself relax, but she could stay a little longer with the old woman who had been her sister-in-law.  
“Come, Natalia, I shall take you to my home and you can meet your niece who lives with me,” Inna said after a moment of silence in which Natasha did not allow herself to come any closer to the old woman.  
“I think I would like that Inna,” Natasha said slowly with a gesture for the woman to lead the way.  
It turned out that Inna’s home was very close to the graveyard where the Shostakovs were buried. Only five minutes walking if Natasha had been moving at her speed. At Inna’s excited shuffle it took closer to twenty minutes to arrive at the old woman’s home. A young blonde woman was stirring a pot on the stove when Inna led Natasha into the small house.  
“Yelizaveta,” Inna called happily. The blonde turned, and it became obvious that she was older than she first appeared. The woman was thirty, perhaps a little older.  
“Mother, who is our guest?” Yelizaveta asked looking from Inna to Natasha and back again.   
“This is Natalia, your aunt,” Inna replied with the high energy she had maintained since Natasha confirmed her identity to the old woman.  
“Mama, Aunt Natalia is long gone with Uncle Alexi,” the woman protested. She spared a glare for Natasha, as though the delusion Inna had fallen into was somehow Natasha’s fault.  
“No, no, Natalia the ballerina,” Inna protested, then the old woman lowered her voice, “She was never a ballerina. Alexi told me once she was an agent of the Motherland. A spy who worked abroad.”  
Natasha froze at the old woman’s words.  
“When did Alexi tell you this?” Natasha asked sharply.  
“As the Red Guardian he came to see me once,” Inna said just as sharply. “He was angry his wife could not know he was alive, and his family could not see him. He snuck away just once to see me.”  
\------  
Natasha had left Russia with the hope of never returning. It was late in 1979, but she had shaken the last of her tails. She had cut the tracker out of her arm and she was free from Russia, free from the brainwashing, free from the training, conditioning, and experimentation. She was free.  
She was starving.  
She had no money, and no way to make money until she fell into the company of an aging woman named Peggy Carter.  
The woman was originally from England, but it seemed clear she no longer worked for her homeland, if she ever had.  
Their association had not begun smoothly. Natasha was desperate for some cash in order to feed herself for the night. Carter had seemed like an easy target, an aging lady who seemed well dressed enough to have a decent amount of money one her. Approximately all of the above was wrong.  
Carter grabbed Natasha’s hand before she could even get close to the purse slung over the woman’s shoulder.  
The woman looked Natasha over for a long moment before speaking. In fluent French she said, “I suppose you’re looking for work then?”  
Natasha was stunned enough that she somehow found herself following Carter into the woman’s hotel and up to the small suite that the woman was inhabiting.  
“I know a spy when I see one,” Carter continued in French as she buzzed around the room preparing tea. Carter looked at Natasha for a long moment as she handed the younger looking woman a mug of tea, “German or Russian I would say.”  
“I’ll not claim either,” Natasha replied also in French, they were near the border with Belgium, and Natasha would not give anything away.  
“Hmm,” Carter said as she settled herself into the second chair in the room. She leaned back and tilted her head as she examined the woman in front of her. “I’d say Ex-KGB then.”  
Natasha did not allow herself to respond, but that was all the other woman needed.  
“I have heard of something being built by the Red Chinese, something which could take down an entire country with ease should they deploy it,” Carter continued, almost conversationally.  
“That does not sound good for countries which oppose the Chinese, does it?” Natasha replied moderating her voice, keeping it even.  
“No, it does not,” Carter replied sipping at her tea. “In fact I’m on my way to shut down their operations in the interests of the American government.”  
“That’s interesting,” Natasha said. The two women had a cold moment of assessing the other over their mugs of tea.  
“I suppose I could use additional assistance from someone versed in espionage,” Carter said offhandedly. Judging only by her tone one would think that she didn’t care one way or the other. Natasha knew better than to judge only by her tone.  
“I wonder where you might find someone with that set of abilities,” Natasha said.  
“Oh, I don’t suppose an ex-KGB agent would fit those qualifications?” Carter said with a raised eyebrow. Natasha finally grinned. She liked this woman.  
So Natasha took the job.  
And with Carter’s team she took down the factory and destroyed every versions of the blueprints for the device that were onsite. The only hitch in the plan was the Red Guardian.  
He showed up about halfway through the operation and turned immediately to stopping Carter’s team from completing their mission. He was admittedly sidetracked when the Chinese general attempted to shoot Natasha.  
It was only as Natasha was running out the doors with Carter’s team that she looked back and saw the Red Guardian without his mask on. It was too late to save Alexi. Natasha instead wrote up detailed plans on how to get in and out of Russia to visit Alexi’s grave.  
She never did.

Natasha unwound her scarf and removed her hat so that Yelizaveta could see her face in full. The blonde woman stared at Natasha before turning and going further into the house. Natasha felt a need to scold the woman for turning her back on a known spy, but she held in the impulse.  
Yelizaveta returned with a battered frame in her hands. She offered it to Natasha. Natasha stared at it a long moment before taking it. It was a photo of Alexi and herself on their wedding day. In fact this was the frame that was in the main room of hers and Alexi’s home during the time they had together.  
“Keep it Aunt Natalia,” Yelizaveta said softly.  
“Come, dinner is ready,” Inna cut in. Natasha turned to her in surprise. She must have been deeply distracted by her thoughts, Yelizaveta, and the photo for her to have missed the old woman hobbling across the room to check on the food.  
As Inna sat Natasha down in one chair and sat next to her, Natasha took to opportunity to look more closely at the old woman. She was in her early 80s, her hair was completely white, and her back was bent in the way that all women who had worked too hard in their lives got. She did not seem sickly, simply old in the way that Natasha would have been had she lived a normal life.  
Of course, if she had lived a ‘normal’ life she likely would not have lived very long.  
\------  
“Natalia, we must run,” Ivan said hoisting the girl higher on his hip. She was crying for her mother, but Ivan continued moving as quickly as he could with a little girl in his arms.  
They raced through the city the sounds of boots on cobblestone chasing them and a blazing fire marking where they had been. Natalia was four.  
\------  
“Come, eat,” Inna urged pushing the spoon closer to Natasha. She gave the woman a tight smile and lifted the spoon.  
“Why have you never returned before?” Yelizaveta asked after Natasha had spooned several mouthfuls of stew into her mouth.  
“For a long time I wasn’t sure you would want to see me,” Natasha admitted. She was finally allowing herself to relax just the smallest amount. With the two women having recognized her and the old photo she was reasonably sure they were not remnants of the Red Room, Leviathan, or Hydra.  
“And why would I not wish to see my sister-in-law?” Inna demanded.  
“We had never properly met to begin with and my marriage to Alexi was arranged by the Soviet State. I didn’t want to bring the world of spies and espionage onto your doorstep. You did not deserve that,” Natasha said.  
“I think she deserved to know her sister-in-law was alive,” Yelizaveta said sharply.  
“Yes, she did,” Natasha said slowly. Trying to not offend the in-laws was a long standing joke in American sitcoms, she had never quite understood it until this moment. There was an instinctual urge not to alienate these people she had never met before. It was the strangest sensation.  
“Calm, children,” Inna did not even speak loudly, yet the other two women turned to her without continuing what was building into an argument.  
“Sorry, Mama,” Yelizaveta said looking down at her bowl for a moment before taking a large bite of her stew.  
Inna nodded in some kind of satisfaction and continued eating.  
The silence was not awkward precisely. Natasha preferred silence for the most part, but she was well aware of the fact that most people did not like silence and a prolonged silence was, in fact, a sort of death to a social situation. Yet neither Inna nor Yelizaveta made any kind attempts to fill the silence. It was their contentment with silence which was awkward for Natasha, used to people like Clint, Phil Coulson, and Tony Stark, all of whom found silences uncomfortable and worked to fill them in whatever way they could.  
As the three women finished their dinner Inna sat back and examined Natasha again.  
“You’ll stay here tonight,” it was not a question.  
“I’ll need to get my things,” Natasha said.  
Inna glanced at where her daughter was clearing the table. Yelizaveta continued in her task for a short moment before meeting her mother’s eyes. Yelizaveta nodded and Inna smiled.  
“Good, Yelizaveta will go with you, help you carry your things,” Inna said with a smile. Natasha simply nodded, it was already clear that Inna was simply not a woman you argued with.


	3. Stella

Natasha stayed with Inna and Yelizaveta for three days. During that time Inna extracted no less than 22 promises that Natasha would not go another forty years before speaking to her. In fact one of those promises might have even been for monthly contact.  
At the end of the three days Natasha finally made her excuses to her in-laws and left Inna’s house.  
The logical thing to do, since she was already in Russia, was to track down what was left of the Red Room.  
Of course she did not expect to literally bump into none other than Steve Rogers while breaking into a long abandoned Red Room facility.  
“Natasha!” If Steve thought that was a whisper, Natasha was going to have to teach her a little something about inside versus outside voices.  
“Steve!” Natasha said at the same volume.  
“What are you doing here?” Steve looked a little embarrassed, “I thought you were doing a ‘finding yourself’ thing?”  
“I’m doing the finding myself thing,” Natasha replied with a grin.  
“Here?”  
“Well, you’ve gotta look at your past to find the future, right?”  
\-----  
Natasha was leaning back in her chair with a barely touched beer in her hand when Steve sat down next to her. He had a beer in his hand as well, and Natasha raised her eyebrow at him.  
“You read my file then?” Steve asked a little wry half-smile on his face. Natasha just smirked. Steve continued, “Just because I can’t get drunk doesn’t mean I never drink.”  
“I suppose, but you’d think you’d drink better beer in that case,” Natasha said and took a gulp of her beer.  
“Nah, this stuff’s just fine,” Steve said. He looked at the bottle in his hand and took a drink of his own beer. Then he looked back at Natasha and said, “You know, we never had good beer back in the day.”  
“Are you sure you can’t get drunk?”  
“I’m fine,”  
“Yeah, sure, except you’re getting awfully sappy,” Natasha said, but she was smiling. She didn’t really want to discourage Steve from opening up if that’s what he wanted to do with his evening off.  
“Just thinking about before the war,” Steve said quietly. Natasha stayed silent, she took just a small sip of her beer. Her alcohol tolerance was high, but this was beer number three, if she wanted to stay mostly sober for this conversation she’d need to take it slow.  
“This stuff is about as terrible as what we could afford before the war,” Steve continued, “You know, I couldn’t keep a job very well, and Bucky did his damndest to make sure I could go to art school. Course he was also saving up money for medicines for me and making sure I got enough food. The damn idiot always went short so I would have enough.”  
“Well, if Clint didn’t have enough money I would do the same thing, and he’d do the same for me,” Natasha said neutrally.  
“You and Clint are like that then?” Steve asked.  
“A couple? Not anymore, he’s more important than any romantic partner could be,” Natasha admitted. Maybe she wasn’t quite as sober as she thought she was.  
Steve nodded knowingly, then said, “Yeah, I think I know what you mean. Bucky...and Peggy and Howard...it wasn’t like having a girl or a fella, it was more than that.”  
“All three of them?”  
“Yeah.”  
“In a row? Or at once?”  
“At once.”  
Natasha nodded and sipped on her beer.  
“You know, that’s okay now, right?” Natasha asked after a pause.  
“What, being with a man? Or being with three people at once?”  
“Well, mostly the first one, but both. Lots of people are into that, as long as everyone knows,” Natasha added the last bit squinting a little. She didn’t think Steve would sleep with someone else behind his boyfriend/girlfriend’s back, but she also thought he would be the paragon of conservative American bullshit, so that was wrong.  
“Yeah, everyone knew,” Steve’s voice was very quiet now, like he was afraid someone would hear their conversation. “In fact, sometimes I thought Howard was more into Peggy than me, but to get Peggy he got me and Bucky in the package.”  
“Howard Stark and Peggy Carter? I don’t see it really,” Natasha admitted as she gave up on having this conversation relatively sober and took a huge draught of her beer.  
“I guess they didn’t work after...well, after,” Steve seemed to have trouble saying what he wanted to. Did he mean after the war? Or was it about after Steve and Bucky died?  
“They both married though, had kids, looked happy from their files,” Natasha said in some half-drunk attempt to make Steve feel better.  
“Do you read everyone’s files?”  
“Pretty much, don’t you?”  
“Well, yeah, I guess I do.”  
\-----  
“This place was abandoned before you were born,” Steve put her hands on her hips, and honestly it was more adorable than stern in Natasha’s opinion.  
“I was abandoned in 1972, that’s not before I was born,” Natasha said and walked around Steve to continue down the long and dank corridor. The first door on the left from where they were standing had once been a dormitory, 28 little girls had slept there. Natasha knew nothing important would have been left behind and she walked right past it.  
“You were born in ‘84, so yes, it was before you were born,” Steve retorted as she followed her down the hall. Steve opened the door which Natasha ignored, but glanced inside and kept moving. There was a pile of mattresses against one wall and beds piled up against another.   
“Well, that information would assume that I told SHIELD everything,” Natasha replied and opened a door on the right side of the hallway. It was an office once upon a time, but all the drawers had been pulled out and left open, a pile of dust covered every surface. Natasha walked into the room and checked every drawer for a false bottom.  
“And you didn’t?”   
Natasha knocked against the bottom of the desk and listened to the sound. Then she turned to smirk at Steve, “A girl never gives up all her secrets.”  
“So, when were you born then?” Steve asked and swiped dust away from the bottoms of drawers, looking to see if anything had been left behind.  
“Didn’t you ever learn not to ask a girl her age?” Natasha asked and crawled under the desk to get a better look. There was a piece of paper covering the bottom of the desk, and Natasha tore one of the edges out without a second thought.  
“Well, you know my age,” Steve said quietly. Natasha looked up from under the desk. Steve was looking shy and gentle in a way she didn’t let herself be very often.  
\-----  
It was the biggest PRIDE event in New Yorks, and had been for the last fifty years. It was held by Stark Industries every year and even though the city was still rebuilding after the Battle of New York, Stark was not going to let this year go uncelebrated.  
Howard Stark started the Stella Memorial PRIDE celebration in 1962. It had been a huge scandalous thing for the country’s leading weapons manufacturer to do, but somehow Howard kept his government contracts and kept the Stella Memorial.  
When Howard died there was apparently no question that it would continue as an annual affair, and now that Tony had switched from weapons to clean energy, the Stella Memorial celebration had only gotten larger.  
Natasha had reluctantly arrived at Tony’s invitation. She had long since come to the conclusion that she fell under the huge umbrella of LGBTQIA+ (which was what Tony used on all the branding the for the Stella Memorial Celebration), but she had never felt any need to try to fit into that community of people. Being aromantic or asexual was not what most people seemed to think of when the Stella Memorial Celebration came along every year. So she came as Tony’s reluctant guest, and not as someone celebrating pride in herself and her sexuality.  
Tony always opened the whole event with a speech about acceptance of people of all sorts, but this year he talked about his dad too.  
“My dad never told anyone who Stella was, not even me,” Tony was saying to a huge crowd. There were reports from a few dozen news outlets in the front row, and crowds of people spreading out in all directions from there. “I think sometimes we forget that we don’t know who she was. In fact, all we know about her is that she had an impact on my father’s life. I asked him about her just once, I was maybe 12 at the time, it was right after that year’s memorial, and I asked him who she was. You know what he said? A woman he loved once. That’s it. That’s all I, or anyone will probably ever know about her. Except I think we know that something about her inspired this. Inspired fifty years of memorials to her and celebrations of all people belonging to the LGBTQIA community. And I think we should remember a woman who could inspire people for over fifty years, and remember ourselves and know, someday, we might inspire the same thing.”  
Natasha clapped politely with all the other people behind the stage. She happened to be standing next to Pepper, and the woman looked like she was about to cry. Natasha hadn’t thought the speech all that moving, but apparently it meant something to her.  
“You know why he made the speech, right?” Pepper said after a moment.   
“No.”  
“Tony and I were talking some months ago about the planning for this and it occurred to us that Stella must have been a trans woman,” Pepper was speaking very quietly.   
“He did it for you then.”  
“For me, but more for her. She must be at least fifty years dead, and yet it never occurred to anyone until now just why Howard Stark wanted to remember her this way.”  
\-----  
“I do suppose turnabout is fair play, isn’t it?” Natasha said slowly before ducking back under the desk and pulling the paper completely free. There was a single sheet of paper, handwritten, left behind. Natasha read it, but she could feel Steve’s tension behind her.  
“I was born either near the end of 1928, or the beginning of 1929, I’ve never been entirely sure which,” she said without looking at Steve.   
Of course the only page of information left behind would be about her. It was why she had come back here in the first place. Natasha folded the page and tucked it into her suit. It wasn’t why Steve had come here after all, she didn’t need to know what Natasha had found.  
“So, you remember the war then?”   
There was no need to ask which war. When Steve was speaking, it was always clear which war.  
“Not the same way you do,” Natasha said. She paused for a moment, how to say what she needed to? “I was much younger, I was not involved in the war in the same way.”  
Steve didn’t say anything and Natasha pulled herself out from under the desk and looked up at her.  
“I think I spent most of the war here, or in another facility just like it,” Natasha finally admitted.  
Steve nodded slowly. She was very good about never pushing too hard.  
\-----  
Natasha had been working with Steve and STRIKE on and off for months before the day she misjudged the arm reach on the guy she was fighting and got her side slashed up. It would heal up, and it wasn’t deep enough to damage any major organs, but it took her out of commission for a couple weeks.  
Steve came to visit before she was released from medical.  
“Hey, you doing okay?” he looked awkward, like he didn’t know what to do with his limbs or where to put them.  
“Yeah, just a scratch. They’ll release me by tomorrow morning,” Natasha replied, she didn’t even have to fake the smile.  
Steve gave a relieved smile and settled himself into the chair next to the bed. Natasha swung around to face him properly. She wasn’t bed bound or anything, she just had new stitches.  
“I’m glad, I was worried, you’re my only friend in the 21st century,” Steve was speaking softly, and Natasha knew that it must have taken a lot for him to admit it.  
“I would like to think that I’d come to check on you if you were injured,” Natasha said.  
“I think you would,” Steve said, his voice still soft. From another person it might have sounded accusatory, but from Steve it was just a statement of fact. He genuinely believed that if he were injured Natasha would come see him. And he was right.  
Steve pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket and waved them in the air.   
“You wanna play?”  
“Yeah,” Natasha said with a smile.  
Steve handed her the deck and pulled the rolling table around so it would be between them. Natasha dealt the cards and as they played Steve told her stories of Brooklyn in the 30s and of the Howling Commandos during the war.  
“Yeah, and then there was that time that--” Steve cut himself off and when Natasha looked up from her cards Steve was looking almost scared.  
“That what?” Natasha prodded softly.  
“That Howard bought me a dress,” Steve’s voice had dropped to a whisper, like he was afraid to tell her. But Natasha didn’t know what he was telling her.  
“Was it a joke?” Natasha dropped her voice as well, if Steve was nervous she didn’t want anyone listening in on their conversation.  
“No, no it was because the dresses I sewed for myself before the war were in Brooklyn, and they were too small after the serum anyways,” Steve wasn’t quite whispering anymore, but his voice was still quiet.  
“So Howard bought you a new one?” Natasha asked. It wasn’t the question she wanted an answer to though. What she really wanted to know was why. Why did Steve sew dresses before the war? Why did he want a new one badly enough that one of his boyfriends would go out and buy one for him? He wasn’t exactly a standard size, it was probably custom made.  
“Yeah, I didn’t quite fit in Peggy’s clothes, so Howard showed up one day, out of the blue, he wasn’t even supposed to be in London that weekend, but he has a dress box in his hands and...well it was red white and blue, because Howard couldn’t help making the joke, but it fit perfectly. Like it was tailored just for me, who even knows how Howard got my measurements so precise,” Steve’s voice got a little louder and more enthusiastic the longer he spoke. This was a story he wanted to tell and had never had the opportunity to before now.  
“And what did Bucky and Peggy say about the flag dress?” she still couldn’t bring herself to ask the questions she really wanted the answers to.  
“Well, Bucky had been taking me dancing in the dresses I made for years, so he wasn’t surprised, not in the least. And I mean, Peggy kept loaning me her jacket when mine was ‘damaged’,” he put little air quotes around the word damaged and Natasha was stunned for a moment at just how much Steve had learned about the 21st century to figure that out. “Besides, all three of them were...well they were using the name I chose for myself.”  
“Yeah?”  
“Stella,” Steve said his voice quiet again, “I chose it for myself when I started making dresses for myself, being myself.”  
“Do you want me to call you Stella then?” Natasha asked, and Steve’s face lit up.   
“No one has since before that last mission,” Steve, no, Stella, said.  
“Then I will,” Natasha said and played her hand.  
When they started talking again it was about Clint’s habit of forgetting that he had already ordered dinner and ordering dinner again. Some nights he ended up with three or four sets of dinner and he just lived off that for a week or more.  
\-----  
Natasha and Steve continued to walk through the facility, but they found nothing else and left without incident.  
When they left Steve insisted that Natasha come back with her and at least say hello to Sam before she disappeared off into the Russian countryside.  
“Sam would kick my ass if I told him that you were here and I didn’t make you come say hi,” Steve told her as she climbed into the car she drove there. The car Natasha had driven was, admittedly, stolen. It was also yet another junker, so it was probably a boon to the owner that they lost it. Thus Natasha had no compunctions with climbing into the passenger seat of Steve’s vehicle. She had probably even rented it under her real name.  
“Sam would try to kick your ass, I think you mean,” Natasha replied as she settled herself into the passenger seat.  
“He wouldn’t try that hard,” Steve admitted smiling over at Natasha. She saw the Captain America facade that Steve was wearing bleed away and make way for Stella.  
“He wouldn’t hit a girl?” Natasha asked with a smirk. Stella’s face didn’t change much, but Natasha knew how much that joke meant to her. Stella wasn’t the first mostly-closeted trans woman she had been friends with and Natasha had found that little jokes when they’re alone was the best way to acknowledge them. At least, it was the easiest way for Natasha to acknowledge them without getting mushy and sentimental, which she did exceedingly badly.  
“If she was trying to hurt him, he probably would actually,” Stella said without missing a beat, “He just wouldn’t hurt a friend.”  
Natasha looked at her companion for a long moment as Stella pulled the truck away from the facility and onto the road back into the nearest town.  
“You interested in him?”  
Stella didn’t answer for ten long minutes. She stared out the front window as she drove and rather studiously did not glance at Natasha.  
“Yeah, I am, a little,” Stella finally admitted as they reached the top of a hill and could see the little town at the bottom.  
“What’s holding you back?”  
“Well, he doesn’t know,” Stella said her voice soft, like she was worried someone might be listening in.  
“Is that conversation on the table?”  
“I don’t know yet.”  
“Want me to prod the subject?”  
Stella was silent again until they started into the town.  
“Yeah, please.”  
Steve and Sam were staying in the only hotel in town. It was small and had more in common with a hostel or a bed and breakfast than a hotel in most cities, but the room had two double beds and an old tv and a bathroom ensuite. So, something between a hostel and a hotel. Natasha had been planning on being two towns over before she went to bed, and had planned on checking into a hostel as a twenty-something American on a graduation tour of Europe and Asia.  
Following Stella up to the room she was sharing with Sam wasn’t a bad alternative. Just a little less fun in the lying department.  
“Natasha!” Sam greeted her as Steve unlocked the door to the room. Natasha smiled at the man and took note of the fact that he seemed to be only half dressed. The man had abs almost as nice as Clint’s, which was surprising given that Sam had been mostly out of the game for a couple of years before joining up with Steve and Natasha to deal with the SHIELD/Hydra situation.  
“Hey Sam,” Natasha said calmly. Sam wrapped his arms around her in a hug and she honestly had no idea why he would do that. They were friendly, not friends. Steve hadn’t even hugged her.  
“It’s good to see you,” Sam said after pulling away from her. He was still smiling and he had this sort of weird look on his face. It was like the grandmothers on TV when they looked at their grandkids and made some kind of comment about how much they had grown.  
“Good to see you too,” Natasha said thoroughly weirded out.  
“Sam must have just woken up,” Steve said nudging both Sam and Natasha aside a little to get past them into the room. The room was basic, two double beds and a couch. That was about it.  
Steve dumped her shield and the keys still in her hand on one of the beds and looked over her shoulder to the door. Sam stepped aside and let Natasha in before putting up the “Do Not Disturb” sign and shutting the door again. He proceeded to lock it.  
“Sam gets really sentimental right after he wakes up,” Steve said with a fond little smile on her face.  
“I do not,” Sam protested and gestured to the couch for Natasha to sit down.  
“You’re not sentimental after you wake up?” Steve said still smiling, but it was wider now, carefree almost. It was Stella instead of Steve.  
“That’s right,” Sam replied and turned to dig in a duffle bag.  
“Ah, so that’s why every morning when we get up you hug me and start telling me sappy stories about everyone you know through the bathroom door as I get ready. You not being sentimental after waking up must also explain how you insist on me getting breakfast both before and after our run because my metabolism is so fast,” Stella said her eyes sparkling.  
Sam was smiling too, it was clear that this was a sort of rehearsed thing, something that had happened many times before. The two looked at each other for a moment and Natasha promised herself that she would have that conversation with Sam soon.  
\-----  
Stella was laughing at something the person on the other side of the phone had said. Natasha had stopped by Stella’s apartment with a couple rotisserie chickens and a six pack of beer after their last mission. Stella had already been on the phone but had gestured Natasha in with a smile and Natasha had in turn taken the food to the kitchen a turned on Stella’s stove to heat the chickens up again.  
“That sounds just like him,” Stella was saying and while Natasha had no real intentions of listening in, she was a spy and listening in on conversations was what she did.  
“No, no, I definitely believe you,” Stella continued after a moment, “Yeah, I’ve got to go though...No, it’s not a work thing, Natasha stopped by with dinner...yeah...I’ll try to call sometime in the next couple of days...no, I don’t know when I’ll be back up there...sure, that sounds great...yeah, bye.”  
Stelle hung up the phone and turned to Natasha still smiling.  
“So, who was that? A boy? A girl? A potential boyfriend slash girlfriend?” Natasha asked with her own smile. She tried to be as expressive as she could be so that Stella always knew when she was teasing and when she was serious. It wasn’t any worse than what she did for work, but she was simply incapable of not controlling every expression her face made. It was something she was working on.  
“It was Pepper actually,” Stella said.  
“Oh, I didn’t know you two were friends,” Natasha replied and busied herself grabbing two beers and passing one to Stella.  
“Yeah, we met when I was still in New York after the Invasion,” Stella said, there was brief pause then: “I met her at the Stella Memorial Day.”  
Natasha didn’t respond immediately. She waited just a second or two before saying, “You two hit it right off then, right?”  
“Well yeah, she knew who I was in seconds, I didn’t really know about the Avengers connection until we had gone out for coffee a couple times. She didn’t realize that I didn’t know who she was until she started talking about Tony and I sprayed coffee all over myself.”  
Natasha allowed the genuine giggles to escape her. The idea of Stella doing a spit-take of coffee all over herself was honestly adorable.  
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Stella said.  
“So, any plans for this weekend?” Natasha asked joining Stella in the kitchen in order to help cut up the chickens. Natasha had brought two, knowing that Stella would eat at least a whole chicken, and likely half of the other as well.  
“Nothing this weekend, I’ll probably just catch up on some reading, or some movies,” Stella admitted as she set out two places at her tiny dining table.  
“Have you got around to Star Trek yet?” Natasha asked as she rooted through Stella’s drawer for a good knife.  
“I thought it was Star Wars,” Stella said looking concerned.  
“Oh, that too, I suppose,” Natasha replied, “I mean, Clint definitely likes Star Wars better, but I think there’s something to say about the optimism of Star Trek that I like better.”  
“I suppose I’ll have to add it to the list,” Stella sounded a little lost, so Natasha turned and smiled at one of her few friends. Stella smiled back and walked over to help dish out the tubs of coleslaw.  
\-----  
That afternoon Stella, Natasha, and Sam moved on to another town. Natasha had a few more old Red Room locations she could give approximate locations for, so they could check them out. There were five she could pinpoint pretty closely and another seven she only knew vague locations for, and would take a little more work.  
They couldn’t quite make it to the next location that night, so they found a small hostel instead. They took an empty room meant for four, and paid for a fourth not to be added. The three superheroes went out looking for dinner, as they had missed the dinner served in the hostel.  
There was a tiny little restaurant next to the only bakery in town. It was certainly a tiny town, and Natasha found herself doing most of the talking; none of the locals seemed to speak more than a dozen words of English, and Steve knew maybe that many words in Russian, Sam knew fewer.  
As the three settled down for dinner a conversation started.  
“This is a tiny place,” Sam said looking around the restaurant’s main dining room. He was right, the room had a tiny bar, and a dozen tables. It was the worn sort of look of a place well attended, but not well earning. They likely had a full restaurant at least once a week and the place has been around at least since the fall of the USSR.  
“Well, it’s a very small town, they probably don’t need more,” Stella said quietly. She was making a concerted effort not to watch the other people in the restaurant for too long.  
“No, I don’t expect they do,” Natasha replied and caught Stella’s eyes. She tried to ask the other woman with just her eyes if she should start that conversation now. Stella’s eyes widened and she seemed to get the message, she paused moment before nodding her head just a little.  
“So, Sam,” Natasha said and leaned on the table a little.  
“So, Natasha?” Sam replied smiling and seeming comfortable with the company.  
“You ever had a boyfriend?”   
Stella and Sam both just sort of sat and stared at Natasha at that. Neither seemed to have a clue what to do about the redhead.  
“So?” Natasha asked again.  
“Uh, yeah, actually a long time ago, in high school, you know?” Sam replied looking infinitely less comfortable now. He was mostly looking at the table, but he kept shooting looks at both Natasha and Stella. Clearly he was worried why Natasha would have brought up the subject (and so bluntly) but also about what the American Icon of Conservatism ™ would think of his admittance.  
“Well, that’s something all three of us have in common besides hating Hydra then,” Natasha said leaning back in her seat like she was satisfied with the results.  
Sam looked up at Natasha sharply before seeming to process the words and looking over at Stella who was fastidiously studying her hands. Sam stared at Stella for a long moment.  
“So…” Sam cut off before getting anywhere, he didn’t seem to know how to continue.  
The moment of silence stretched onwards. The waiter arrived with plates of stew for all three of them and placed the bowls in front of them. Natasha thanked him, dismissed him, and watched her companions over her bowl. Sam seemed stuck still and was just staring at Stella, who had, in the uncomfortable silence, started in on her stew as a way of avoiding the confused stare of her most recent friend.  
Natasha was almost finished with her food when she finally set her spoon in the bowl loudly and sighed in an equalling dramatic fashion to draw Sam and Stella’s eyes.  
“Steve is bi, Steve wanted me to feel you out to see how you felt about that before coming out to you,” Natasha said exasperated, “That’s what all this is about. Jesus Christ you two are slow.”  
Stella had a blush crawling across her face and Sam looked like someone had just explained the secrets of the universe to him. Natasha just shook her head and finished her stew.


	4. The Winter Soldier

Traveling with Steve and Sam was more fun than Natasha might have expected. Sam insisted on choosing the music at every turn, in order to help educate Stella, of course. They reached their destination well before noon the next day (perhaps because Stella had them all up for a run as the ass crack of dawn, and even after their run it was only six when they stopped into the bakery to grab a few pastries for the drive).  
It was another small town where, once upon a time, there had been a facility. This one had been a Leviathan facility back in the late fifties, but it was around then that Hydra was building up their numbers inside SHIELD. Natasha remembered this facility though, she had been loaned out to Leviathan at this facility and it was there she met the Winter Soldier for the first time.  
\-----  
Natalia was, at this point, rather used to being loaned out from the Red Room to other organizations. This time was only unusual in that the Red Room had given her no orders as to when to return to the Red Room, nor any mention of her returning at any point. Of course she was sure that she would someday be recalled to a Red Room facility somewhere, it was just a matter of when.  
“You will work with the Winter Soldier,” her new handler was an older man, thin and ratty looking.  
Natalia looked past him to the man standing in the shadows over the handler’s shoulder. His hair was a little long for your average soldier and despite the cold of Russian winter outside, he wore no sleeves. Not to mention, his left arm was made of metal.  
\-----  
“So what is this place? It wasn’t in your file,” Sam asked as they climbed out of the rented car.   
“It wouldn’t have been, Hydra tried to erase that period from all records,” Natasha said.  
“That’s not really comforting,” Sam replied looking at the swat bunker style building half covered with vines and bushes which had grown up in the forty years since this facility had fallen out of use.  
“I didn’t think it was,” Natasha said and started towards the building. She heard both Sam and Stella falling into step behind her, and she rather enjoyed the feeling of having backup in this place.  
There were few places in Russia that Natasha could say held good memories, but this particular place held particularly bad ones. Even the sort-of-okay memories of this place were colored by the darker and more terrible moments she had spent here.  
\-----  
The Winter Soldier was a man of extremely few words. In the three months they had been partners the man had not said a single word which was not related to the mission. Natalia often wondered if perhaps he was not a man at all, but a machine of some kind. Natalia was always mission-focused when on mission, after the debacle that was her first mission outside of Russia, she had realized that she could never afford to allow her attention to waver from the mission. But this man, this machine, he had that same tunnel-vision for the mission all the time. It didn’t matter if it was during downtime or a meal or a mission, he was always sharply focused on his task. And he never spoke unless he had to.  
Somewhere around the start of Natalia’s fourth month working for Leviathan she was sent on a long term mission with the Winter Soldier into London. They had been sent on a number of missions, but this was the first long-term mission away from Russia.   
Their covers was as Russian immigrants fleeing from the communist regime of their Motherland. Their cover was also as a recently married couple. Their apartment was a tiny little closet of a space, and to maintain their cover they shared the space, and the bed. It was that last part that lead to everything after. Sharing a bed.  
Before this mission they had never addressed each other by anything other than their codenames. But now their cover was a married couple, and as a married couple they must address each other. Their covers were Yakov and Tatiana Orlov.  
Suddenly while conducting surveillance they had conversations.   
“Tania, what are your plans for this afternoon?” he asked as they sat in a tiny cafe, their table positioned so that he could watch the front door while Natalia kept her eye on the counter and the door into the kitchens behind it.  
“I thought I would look for some work, perhaps with one of the big companies by the river,” Natalia replied softly, like a shy woman unused to attention, and even less used to crowded places.  
“I think I saw an ad for a secretary at Stark Industries.” They had spent their morning scouting different companies which seemed likely assist in war efforts against the Russians. Stark Industries had always been a contender in their investigation, but the Soldier had been watching Stark that morning. It seemed there was not an opening for him, but she could make her way in if she tried.  
“Ah, Yasha, you are so good to me,” Natalia replied plastering a soft and adoring smile on her face.  
It was then that Natalia caught a glimpse of something in the Soldier’s eyes. It was only there for a second and gone again, but she worried over that look all day.  
\-----  
The door into the facility was exactly where Natasha remembered it being. The door had been locked up when the facility was abandoned, but it was little more than a simple electronic lock. In the early sixties it would have been the height of technology, now it was child’s play. Well, it had always been child’s play for Natasha, but even Stella would be able to get it without too much trouble with a little technology.  
“What happened here?” Stella asked from somewhere near Natasha’s left shoulder. She didn’t look up from the wires inside the box, but she paused for a fraction of a second.  
“A lot of things happened, but knowing what I do now? This is the place I should have realized I was one of the bad guys.”  
\-----  
Natalia came back to the tiny shoebox apartment just after six. The Soldier was already back. The man was sitting in the one corner completely invisible to someone watching from the window, and where he would be able to see someone coming into the room before they saw him. He was carefully cleaning his gun.  
This mission had not included one of the Soldier’s huge sniper rifles, only a small gun concealable in any type of clothing. Natalia had not been given a gun for this mission at all. In fact when they had been sent without a way of contacting Leviathan except in absolute cover-is-blown emergency, it was with the clothes on their backs, a files full of paperwork, a bag full of cash, and one gun.  
Natalia had not been sent out so under armed since she was a small girl not finished with her training. That had been a survival test, she was sent into the wilderness of Russia in early November and told to survive for three weeks with only the clothes on her back. She had returned with a collection of stone knives, ten pounds lighter, and the pelts of a dozen rabbits wrapped around her for warmth.   
This mission was far more difficult than that test so many years ago, but Natalia remembered flashes of those three weeks over and over again. Every time she saw the Soldier with the only gun she had a tiny flash of panic deep inside herself. She had been quick enough in getting her hands on a few knives to keep herself safe if it should turn out that the Soldier was meant to kill her, but it was little comfort as he caressed that gun like an old lover.  
“Report?” the Soldier ordered as Natalia shut the door behind her. His eyes stared into her, past her exterior into something that only he could see.  
“Job at Stark Industries secured, surveillance begins Monday, 8 am,” Natalia replied sharply before stepping away from the door and towards the tiny kitchenette of their apartment.  
“I found work at the Stark subsidiary labs,” the Soldier’s voice was softer suddenly. Natalia was not sure she had ever before heard the man speak in that tone before. His Russian was accented as she had never heard it before, like a second or third language learned late in life.  
Natalia had heard their handlers refer to the Winter Soldier as The American sometimes when they assumed she was out of earshot. Few people remembered that when they had injected her with the series of super soldier serum tests, some of them had taken. They forgot she was not 19 and fully human. At the Red Room they never dared to forget, they were too busy at all times ensuring that Natalia was completely under their control. In three months at Leviathan they had never used a single mind control technique. It was sloppy and her mind was her own for the first time since Ivan rescued her from the burning remains of her parent's home at the age of 5.  
“Day or night work?” Natalia asked not allowing herself to hesitate. She could not show that she had noticed the change in tone.  
“Day work,” The Soldier said then there was a confused pause and he continued in English without the lilt of Russian accent on his words. He sounded American, “Just cleaning the hallways, not even got access to the labs themselves. I’ll work around to it.”  
It was not even the proper American English she heard as a child in the Red Room’s indoctrination. It was the way a native spoke their mother tongue.  
Natalia switched to English, but spoke with an accent that spoke clearly of Russia, “It should not be difficult, the help are ignored, they may not even notice you slipping into the labs at night.”  
The Soldier nodded slightly then he finished putting the gun back together, checked the safety was on, and slipped the gun into the back of his pants. It was the careless way of someone who did not care to conceal their weapon, just put it in arm's reach.  
The pair did not speak again until dinner was cooked, eaten, and the dishes washed and put away. It was silent, in fact, until after they turned off the lights and crawled into the bed, almost too small for the two of them.  
“I dream sometimes of falling,” the Soldier said quietly, he spoke now in Russian, slowly like a half-remembered language, “I do not know why I am falling, or where I am falling to. Just a long endless fall, and I wake before I land.”  
Natalia did not reply, but she turned on her side to face the man.  
“I think perhaps I am falling to my death.”  
\-----  
The inside of the facility was dark. There were no windows at all, and the power had long since been disconnected. It might be possible to rig something up, but it seemed unnecessary as Sam and Stella both pulled flashlights out and turned them on to light the corridor.  
Natasha stepped to the side and let Stella walk alongside her.   
“Should we be watching for booby traps or ghosts? This looks like i should be watching for one of those,” Sam complained from behind them. Natasha turned and smiled at Sam.  
“I think ghosts are the bigger worry here,” she said. Her smile might have been a bit more of a smirk. But who was really counting?  
“Of course they are,” Sam said under his breath. The two super soldiers laughed and continued through the building. At every door they paused, opened it, and checked the room. Most of them were labs, long since cleared out and offices empty even of their furniture. Finally the corridor ended in a fork. Natasha turned on memory to the left. It was muscle memory more than anything which lead her to the second door on the left. She heard Sam and Stella checking the four doors she completely bypassed. There wouldn’t be anything left in those rooms. They were bunk rooms, and, like the offices, were likely cleared even of furniture. But this door, well, the chair had been bolted to the floor.  
\-----  
Every night for a week the Soldier would whisper secrets to Natalia.   
“I think they erase my memories.”  
“I forgot my cover yesterday. I can’t remember now what I called myself, but it wasn’t Yakov.”  
“I sometimes see a girl’s face, but she’s different somehow, she’s got the most beautiful blue eyes. I think I loved her.”  
“I remembered a flying car last night. It fell.”  
“There were men laughing around a fire. I think they were soldiers.”  
“I went to a different pub before work. I’ve been there before. There was a burnt poster in a frame for a Captain America show. That’s important somehow.”  
“I saw Howard Stark today. He knew me.”  
Natalia never said anything, but on the last night of the week she reached out and pulled the Soldier’s head so he was facing her. He looked scared, but wistful in the dim light coming through the shut curtains.  
“How did you know Stark?” Natalia finally asked after examining his face for a long time.  
“I don’t know,” the Soldier looked frightened at that thought. His expressions were usually so limited, it was a flicker in his eyes, or a twitch of his jaw. This was his whole face screaming fear.  
“Did Leviathan take that memory?” Natalia asked pitching her voice even lower. They swept the room for bugs and checked for listeners every evening, but this was a secret almost too dangerous for words.  
“It was someone else,” the Soldier said his voice barely even a whisper. Just a breath in the space between them. “I don’t know who they are, but they loaned me to Leviathan. Like a favorite gun.”  
“The Red Room did the same to me,” Natalia admitted her voice as soft as the man lying beside her.  
“We should run away,” the Soldier breathed into the still air of the apartment.  
Natalia could not respond to that.  
The next morning Leviathan called them back.  
They wiped them both.   
Natasha remembered the mission only after the Winter Soldier shot a man through her abdomen.  
\-----  
Natasha stood in the doorway of the room and realized that she was still afraid of the equipment abandoned in this room. The room had changed very little from her scattered and broken memories of the four months she had been in this building. She thought she should have been surprised by the banks of machines against all three walls, but mostly she was afraid of that chair.  
Since she defected from Russia she had worried frequently at her memories. Had she really only been in this building four months? Or had she in fact been here much longer? Was that week in London the only time the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes, had confided in her? Had they actually spoken many times? Had they been lovers?  
She would never know the answers to any of those questions. She would not allow anyone else to play in her mind like she had in those days.  
“You alright?” Stella asked placing a heavy hand on Natasha’s shoulder. She had not heard the other woman approach and the wavering light in Stella’s hand cast long and forbidding shadows across the room in front of her.  
“I’m fine,” Natasha replied, “I think this is what you’re looking for. It might not lead you to Barnes, but with this equipment you’ll be able to get a better feel for what was done to him.”  
“Yeah,” Stella said, her voice soft and distracted. She did not believe that her friend was okay, but Natasha had seen what she needed to. Between this room and the page from the other facility she was as sure of her memory as she could be.  
Natasha had known that her memory was wiped repeatedly and that her mind had been manipulated, yet she had returned when called like a dog which had been whipped repeatedly and returned to its abuser. And as Stella moved past Natasha into the room and started to examine the machines left behind by Leviathan or the Red Room or KGB or whoever had cleared out this building, Natasha determined that she would never be used again.  
She would not answer to any power except her own conscience, never again.


	5. SHIELD

Stella and Sam dropped Natasha off at an airport in St. Petersburg two days later. She had seen what she needed to in Russia. She had done what she needed to do, and she was ready to go back to America. Russia had not been home since 1933 when her mother had burned to death in a house which was meant to be safe for them.  
Natasha spent the entire flight from St. Petersburg to New York pondering on homes. In that time she came to several conclusions. First, Natasha’s apartment in DC had never been home, just a place to stay as she did her job. Second, she had, in a way, been homeless since shortly after her fifth birthday. Third, The only place she had been in her life that she could call a home, was not her home, it was instead the Barton farmstead. And finally, she did not think there would ever be a place which was her home, rather than the place where she lived.  
\-----  
“There was a long line of people making decisions behind my back to get you here in my office,” Fury said looking crossly at Natasha. She had been at the New York base less than ten minutes before she was summoned to Fury’s office by a scared looking level 3 agent.  
Fury was, in truth, an intimidating figure. The way he stood, his long leather coat, the stern expression on his face, and the scars running out under the eyepatch. It was all built up together into a person who could give people nightmares. Did give people nightmares.  
Natasha watched his face without an expression of her own.  
“You must be even better than reports say for Barton, Coulson, and Hill to all go along with bringing you in,” Fury continued. He didn’t seem worried that Natasha’s expression had not shifted. In fact Fury turned away from her in order to look out the window. Natasha could see her reflection in the window and had glimpsed the shape of a gun as he turned to face the window. He wasn’t really underestimating her, he wanted to see how good she was.   
So she didn’t move.  
“Since Barton’s already gone ahead and brought you in, we’re going to make use of you,” Fury finally said after a pause.  
“I expected nothing less.”  
\-----  
Natasha got off the plane without a plan. She didn’t know where she was going or what she was going to do, so we walked out of the airport, but ended up getting onto the subway.  
She texted Clint aas she went. He would have held onto the same burner phone until he could get a new permanent one. He didn’t reply immediately, but that was understandable. He was notorious for taking out his aids or leaving his phone in another room or forgetting to put his phone on vibrate or all of the above.  
He would reply as soon as he saw, and Natasha continued into the city.  
\-----  
“I thought you might agree,” Fury replied and slowly turned back to look at Natasha.  
“I’m willing to do quite a lot,” Natasha replied, “I’ve done a lot of things I don’t like now, and I’m ready to make up for them.”  
“I know what you’ve done over the last several years, some of the crimes, atrocities, you’ve had a hand in,” Fury replied his eye burrowing into Natasha like he could see into her broken, barely mended mind. “There’s no wiping that out.”  
“I know,” Natasha said simply. No more was needed to be said on that subject and Fury seemed content with her response.  
There was a short moment of silence before Fury finally sat back behind his desk and leaned back, still examining Natasha.  
“We’ll put you through some basic tests. Physical and mental both, what we do with you will be based on those tests. Any intel you’ve got, we need,” Fury seemed to be looking for something in Natasha, and she didn’t know if he found it, but after a moment he nodded, just a little bit. “We’ll look into assigning you once we’ve gotten you through all the tests.”  
Natasha understood it for the dismissal it was.  
As she left the office she found herself rather fond of the man who had just examined her thoroughly in under five minutes and seemed not to find her lacking.  
\-----  
Natasha got off the subway at a stop in Manhattan and started walking down the sidewalk. She had been walking for almost a while when she came across an electronics store. It seemed like the right time to get herself a new permanent phone. Then she could send Clint, Stella, Sam, and Pepper her new number. Perhaps also Maria. Most definitely not Tony Stark.  
But Maria, yeah, Maria could have her new number.  
\-----  
Everyone in the base knew that Maria Hill was Commander Fury’s favorite. It was even a little funny to realize that probably everyone in SHIELD knew that Hill was Fury’s favorite agent. It was like how teachers were meant to treat every student the same, but they all had that one favorite student.  
You knew you were on the road to becoming one of Fury’s favorite when Hill was assigned to you. It only took Natasha a day to realize that Fury had seen a lot more than even she had realized that day in his office, and he was well on his way to trusting her implicitly. It was strange feeling for her, since she had never once remembered anyone trusting her like this and she could not think what to do with that level of trust.  
Natasha found every test they gave her simple. The physical tests ended with her getting scores so high they barely could process them and the mental tests either had her scoring high, or she lied on them in order to pass. After all, SHIELD had no need to know just what level of mental fuckery she had lived through in the last sixty years. Natasha also did not give them her real birthdate or any information on the serums she was injected with over and over again. They thought her a formerly brainwashed 20-something year old, and she would leave it that way.  
It was safer for her if she had a few secrets she could keep.  
After her last test (or at the least the last test they told her about), Maria Hill was standing in the hallway with her arms crossed over her chest. Maria wasn’t really much older than Natasha looked. She was in her young twenties but confident in her place in SHIELD as Fury’s Right Hand.   
(There was a young man barely out of high school who Fury seemed to trust just as much as Hill, but whoever he was, he didn’t work in the same base, he was somewhere else and while Natasha hadn’t heard his name yet, she had heard him referred to as Fury’s One Good Eye.)  
“I don’t know what secrets you’re keeping, but you know they’re going to come out eventually right?” Maria said without preamble as she gestured down the hall and started walking. Natasha fell into step with her rather easily. “I don’t expect you to tell me, your secrets are yours and I’ll find them out when I have to. Just know, someday someone will find something out. You’ll have to be ready for that moment.”  
“I think I’ve always known I could not have secrets forever,” Natasha admitted. Maria looked over at Natasha and simply nodded.  
The two women made their way to the cafeteria in companionable silence. As they ate Maria described some new TV show which Clint Barton was obsessed with. Clint plopped himself into a seat as the two women finished their food.  
It was a bit like what Natasha always assumed friendship looked like.  
\-----  
The phone was a StarkPhone, as much as she found Tony an annoying gnat of a man, his company really did make the best quality electronics. Also, she knew Stark’s operating systems well enough that she knew she could build in a dozen levels on encryption to keep her phone and its contents safe from even Stark’s prying eyes.   
As soon as the contracts were signed and the money paid, Natasha sent out text messages to the memorized numbers for Clint’s burner phone and Maria’s personal cell phone (the only people in SHIELD who had the number were Fury, Coulson, Clint, and Natasha herself, Natasha was assuming Maria hadn’t thrown out the phone), as well as Pepper’s cell phone. Stella’s phone was the same one she had been using before the fall of SHIELD, so instead of saving her contact information, she told Stella to get a new phone as soon as she got back to the US. Natasha didn’t have Sam’s number and made a mental note to get it as soon as she heard from Stella that they were back in the country.  
Natasha kept walking as she sent her messages and set up her phone. It was running low on power so Natasha went into the first coffee shop she saw in hopes that it would have available power outlets to allow her to plug in her phone.  
It was a tiny little place down the street from skyscrapers and frequented by business people. Natasha hadn’t even realized that it was lunch time until she saw the room packed with people. Including a familiar face.  
\-----  
The first time Natasha met Phil Coulson she was surprised by him. He was older than she expected based on the rumors about him, and it was clear that even if he was recruited just out of high school that had been a long time ago. It was the fact that the rumors continued to speak of him as a young man that confused Natasha more than anything. Coulson was at least thirty at this point, and very possibly well into his thirties.  
He was incredibly efficient in a way that Natasha could not help but admire. As soon as she actually met Coulson she went looking for whatever records were available to her as a level three agent barely out of probation. What little she could get her hands on said that he had never once screwed up a mission. He’d been working for SHIELD for fifteen years and never once had he had a mission go bad because of something he did or failed to do. That’s of course not to say every mission went perfectly, simply that when things went to hell in a handbasket, the blame was never on Coulson’s shoulders.  
Their first meeting was casual, a simple greeting in the corridor. Coulson knew who she was, but made no big deal about it. Just introduced himself and congratulated her on her first completed solo mission with SHIELD.   
The next time they met, Natasha had been called to a meeting with Fury. Coulson and Hawkeye were both waiting in the conference room by the time she arrived.  
“I’ve got a new assignment for you all,” Fury said simply as Natasha took a seat next to Hawkeye. They had worked together on almost all of the missions she had been sent on. The exclusions being Natasha’s two solo missions and the three she ran with Hill.  
Neither of the men replied, so Natasha stayed silent as well.  
“You three will form Strike Team Delta,” Fury continued. He had not been expecting a response.  
Coulson was nodding as if this was expected, barely a surprise at all. Perhaps some of the rumours really were true, perhaps Fury truly did trust this man as much as he trusted Hill.  
\-----  
Natasha sat down across from him without stopping by the counter for a drink. She simply sat down in the empty seat and looked directly in Coulson’s eyes.  
“It’s been a long time,” Natasha said casually, and leaned back in her seat a little.  
“Yes, it has,” Coulson was nervous, Natasha could tell. His face was calm, and his body would seem relaxed to anyone but another spy.  
“You needn’t worry,” Natasha said, “I’ve known for months that you were alive. Fury might have kept it all on paper, but there were a frightening number of agents let in on at least part of the secret. Very sloppy.”  
Natasha was smiling though, and it was an actual smile, not a smirk. After everything since the fall of SHIELD she was feeling relatively comfortable with herself, a genuine smile would hurt nothing.  
“Yes, I suppose I should have known that,” Coulson replied.  
“It’s quite alright, I haven’t informed anyone, but if I were you I’d probably get in touch with Pepper pretty soon, she was really quite upset by your death.”  
“I know, there are some things going on, and I’ve been rather busy to inform anyone.”  
“You’re back in New York though, I would assume that since you’re already here you might choose to have a meeting of some kind, let her know that you’re alive.”  
“Yes, but she’ll tell Stark, and I’m not sure I’m ready for the rest of the Avengers to know.”  
“Well, ready or not, I’ll tell them if you haven’t by the Stella Memorial Day,” Natasha told him quite calmly.  
“I suppose that’s an alright trade. That’s in March, correct? That gives me a year to clean things up a little before Stark and Barton make a brand new mess for me,” Coulson replied. His shoulders slumped a little, and it was clear that he was actually relaxed now, where before he had been relatively alert and ready for something to happen.  
Natasha couldn’t help but wonder if he had been worried that she might attack him somehow. Maybe he thought she was an imposter of some kind. But would an imposter hold him to a day like the Stella Memorial Day? Or know that Pepper and Coulson were friends? Perhaps if they were as good as she was. But the number of people on her level were remarkably small.  
\-----  
Hill, Clint, and Natasha were eating lunch in the mess at the Triskelion after a long mission. Maria had been running back-end while Coulson was out in the field with Natasha and Clint was backup watching from above. It had gone South when it turned out their intel was not as good as they thought. They all got out alright, but Hill was going to be on desk duty for at least two months after her wrist was broken. Over a month for the break itself to heal and a couple more weeks of physical therapy to get herself back into fighting shape.  
It was a blow. Coulson was almost undoubtedly complaining about the bad intel to Fury. Fury had given the rest of the team a cursory debrief while Hill was in the infirmary, but Coulson had been summoned for a more thorough debrief.  
“Well that was a shitstorm,” Clint said pushing his plate away from himself.   
This had been only the third mission for Strike Team Delta. The first two had been routine, almost boring. But this one, well this one had gone wrong in every single way that a mission could have gone wrong.  
“That’s an understatement,” Hill said operating her fork with less finesse than normal, it was her dominant hand which had been injured.  
“We have a leak, your missions from here on out are limited knowledge, need-to-know only,” Fury said from behind Natasha as he approached their table. Coulson was just behind him, and looking grim.  
“We’ll find the leak as fast as possible, but we’re compartmentalizing even further from here on out,” Coulson said looking as calm as possible.  
\-----  
Coulson left the coffee shop after getting Natasha’s phone number. (Natasha took his number as well, she was sure it was a burner phone, but that was enough to be able to contact him if needed.)  
Natasha switched tables to sit next to the only power outlet when the table cleared a few minutes later. She ordered a coffee and sat back to relax for a little while. She couldn’t remember the last time she was fully comfortable relaxed, and perhaps it wasn’t smart to relax in a public place like this, but New York was a more comfortable place than most of the world. Even with the continuing construction throughout the city.  
It was as Natasha was leaning back in her seat and watching the window outside that she saw her. Maria Hill herself walking down the road.  
\-----  
“Why don’t you two ever hang out or whatever?” Clint asked watching Maria and Natasha talking after a mission.  
“We’re not friends,” Maria said with a raised eyebrow. She had recently been promoted to Level 9, and she was acting as Fury’s right hand and official Second-In-Command.  
“Well, yeah, but why not?” Clint asked looking from one woman to the other. One was his boss and the other his sort-of-girlfriend. They weren’t defining their relationship.  
“Just because we’re both women doesn’t mean we’re automatically best friends,” Natasha told him with her own raised eyebrow.   
“Okay, but you like each other right?” Clint asked.  
Both women simply stared at him. His instance they they should hang out made it all the less likely that they would do so.   
After that conversation the only times they hung out together was when they both were trying to hang out with a mutual friend at the same time.  
\-----  
Natasha got up promptly and was out the door less than five minutes after spotting Maria through the window. She scanned the street and caught sight of Maria’s dark hair turning a corner. It looked like she was walking slowly, unconcerned about people potentially following or attacking her. Natasha knew that as soon as she turned the corner Maria would catch sight of her, and within ten minutes she would have started leading her follower into a situation where Maria would have the upper hand. Soon after she would realize that it was Natasha and likely stop for her. Natasha just wished she had Maria’s number in order to call her and tell her that she saw her and wanted to ‘hang out.’  
Things proceeded exactly as Natasha predicted. Within fifteen minutes she was face to face with Maria Hill again.  
“So, I heard you got a job at Stark Industries,” Natasha said and casually she took a sip of her coffee. She spent seven dollars on it, it wasn’t worth leaving on a table just to stalk a former coworker/almost-friend.  
“I did, Stark is trying to privatize world security again,” Maria replied, “I figured I’ll help him out until there’s a better option.”  
“Coulson know? You know how he feels about SHIELD,” Natasha asked. Maria was silent for a moment.  
“Why am I not surprised that you knew?” Maria finally said.  
“Because you know me, because we’ve worked together,” Natasha replied with a shrug.  
“Fair enough,” Maria replied and started walking, “My lunch break is up, so we’ll need to walk and talk.”  
Natasha nodded and continued walking alongside Maria.  
“So, is Coulson continuing SHIELD? Or is he restarting it? I saw him earlier today, but we weren’t secure and couldn’t know who might be listening,” Natasha said as they strolled along in the direction of Stark Tower.  
“And this is more secure?” Maria asked looking at the other woman.  
“Slightly, because we’re a moving target we’re slightly harder to pin down. But we’re both watching our surroundings, we’ll note anything which should be noted,” Natasha replied calmly. Maria nodded slowly.  
“We’d be better off going to my office to talk about this,” Maria replied.  
“I’m not sure I really want to be that close to Stark,” Natasha admitted.


	6. Pepper

Natasha did end up accompanying Maria back into Stark Tower. The strangest thing was that the front office didn’t give her a visitor’s badge, but rather one which had been prepared in advance for her. Of course, Natasha had half expected it to say ‘Natalie Rushman,’ but instead it said ‘Black Widow’ and it didn’t include a picture of her face or any identifying characteristics. Just a chip inside that was only detectable to JARVIS.  
As Maria led Natasha into the elevator, Natasha thought she caught a glimpse of Pepper, but Natasha did not call out to her, and instead simply allowed the doors to close.  
\-----  
Natasha’s mission at Stark Industries (or rather, her third mission at Stark Industries) really started the first time she got close to Stark himself. It was to deliver the documents to legally pass the running of the company from Stark to Pepper Potts, his personal-assistant-turned-friend/power-behind-the-throne. It probably wouldn’t have gone quite so well if Harold “Happy” Hogan hadn’t tried to throw a surprise punch at her.  
Natasha was suddenly glad that part of her backstory for Natalie Rushman had included the fact that she had studied martial arts growing up. Otherwise that might have been an awkward moment to explain.  
When she got an email from Stark asking for her to be his personal assistant she was less than surprised. She was slightly more surprised that she liked Pepper’s attitude.  
She never once let Stark get away with something that she could prevent. And if he did something she did not approve of, she made it very clear to everyone in the area that she disapproved. Honestly, Pepper reminded Natasha of Maria Hill or Melinda May, strong women who would never let a man get the upper hand in an argument. In fact they wouldn’t let anyone get the upper hand in any argument.  
Natasha found herself watching Pepper every bit as much as she was Stark.  
\-----  
Maria and Natasha left the elevator on one of the higher floors. The top 25 were apparently devoted to a combination of labs and living spaces, while the ten floors just below that were all administrative for the executive and marketing departments of Stark Industries. Honestly the whole building was over the top, but that was to be expected when it came to Tony Stark. Maria’s office had a surprisingly huge window looking out over Manhattan. The furniture had the same level of sleek uber-modern as the rest of Stark Tower, but in Maria’s office that was offset with a comfortable looking afghan thrown over the back of Maria’s office chair, and throw pillows on the couch in the corner of her office.  
“Now, what do you know?” Maria asked bluntly as she settled herself behind her desk.  
“He’s not dead, I knew that even before I saw him this afternoon,” Natasha said.  
“He did die,” Maria replied.  
“So Nick didn’t simply lie to us?I wouldn’t have been surprised had that been the case,” Natasha told her.  
Maria paused for a long moment.  
“I know he doesn’t really regret lying to you, he thought it was necessary. But I regret how much he’s put you through,” Maria’s expression was serious and earnest and as much as Natasha wanted to be angry with her, she couldn’t be. Natasha could not recall Maria’s expression ever before being that open and sincere.  
\-----  
After Monaco Natasha found herself working with Pepper more and more. Mostly assisting her in the office when Stark was off doing something else.  
“Have you ever just realized that you don’t know someone as well as you thought you did?” Pepper asked softly, her head resting on her fist.  
“Many times,” Natasha replied more softly then she would have as herself. But Natalie Rushman was more likely to speak softly to people than Natasha Romanoff.  
“I just,” Pepper started her voice hard and frustrated, but restrained. Then she pulled her head from her hand, sat up straight, and spoke again, “What is wrong with him? I have always had my hands full dealing with him, but everything recently has just been completely over the top. Monaco? What the hell happened in Monaco?”  
“People can do crazy things when they feel immortal,” Natasha said then paused, “Or particularly mortal.”  
“It’s all this Iron Man stuff,” Pepper said with a nod. “It’s like he grew as a person after Afghanistan and then suddenly as he gets famous as Iron Man he’s that same person from before. Stocks are dropping left right and center, he’s in every tabloid, and now he’s risking his life on even more dangerous stunts.”  
“He’s a man, they’re always dumb at some point,” Natasha told her.  
It wasn’t until after the incident at Stark Expo that it occurred to Natasha that she had been speaking of Clint and Phil and Nick and all the other men in her past. She hadn’t been speaking as Natalie Rushman afterall.  
\------  
“I didn’t expect Nick to be guilty,” Natasha said slowly. Then she continued more smoothly, “Is Phil restarting SHIELD then? He has always believed in it more than any of the rest of us.”  
“Yes, he’s become Director for the new SHIELD. He had a team before the fall of SHIELD and they’ve become his ranking agents. For the moment at least,” Maria replied.  
“Who does he have?”  
“May, Morse, FitzSimmons, Triplett, a few others, and a new girl he recruited against everyone else’s better judgment,” Maria told her calmly.  
“Has anyone ever bothered to tell Steve about Agent Triplett, do you think?” Natasha asked her voice absent-minded. After all, she had not thought to inform Stella of the grandson of one of the Howling Commandos being a part of SHIELD.  
“I doubt it,” Maria replied.  
“Steve should know,” Natasha decided aloud. Keeping secrets from her had already hurt Natasha badly enough with the fall of SHIELD, she didn’t need to continue doing so.  
\-----  
“Miss Potts,” Natasha greeted calmly several days after her identity had been revealed as a spy.  
“I have nothing to say to you, I’m far too busy,” Pepper told her with barely a glance in the direction of the other red-head.  
“I wished to apologize,” Natasha said feeling awkward. Pepper turned to look at her then. There was an expectant look on her face. Natasha continued, “My job was to watch Stark because he was exhibiting unusual behavior. When we had figured out what was wrong with him my focus shifted. There was a threat growing and Stark was going to be too busy saving his own life to protect the people around him. I found myself...fond of you, and I decided I would keep you safe in his stead.”  
“I can protect myself,” Pepper said.  
“Not against a threat you had no way of expecting. So I stayed close to you in order to keep you safe and I justified it to my superiors as watching Stark’s behavior from whatever avenue was open to me,” Natasha was justifying herself, and she knew it. They were excuses, nothing more substantial than that. Pepper was deeply betrayed by Natasha’s actions and Natasha was guilty about it. She liked Pepper, saw in her someone she could become friends with (like Clint and Phil and May) and Natasha felt a need to make their relationship right again.  
After Natasha stopped speaking Pepper stared at her for a very long moment. Natasha was not sure what the other woman was looking for, or what she saw, but whatever it was Pepper gave a small smile after a little while.  
“At the very least you owe me coffee and a better explanation,” Pepper said.  
\-----  
“You should tell him the next time you speak with him,” Maria said looking across the desk.   
“I should let you work,” Natasha said looking at the desk itself. After a moment she flipped a switch under the desk. One of Stark’s giant holo-projections sprung to life over the desk, but simply showed a desk like Maria had always had. Maria’s desk at SHIELD had always been organized chaos: unpredictable piles of papers mixed with USB drives, CDs and, occasionally, floppy disks. Her desk at Stark Industries wasn’t much better. Except now everything was digital readouts and bright blue files. Stark had taken out all the stops with Maria’s desk.  
“Is this the sort of thing Stark is doing for all his employees?” Natasha asked looking over the piles. She caught the names of some of SHIELD files and names from the Index and blueprints buried at the bottom that looked like they might be a helicarrier.  
“No, just the ones he wants to impress,” Maria said with a little laugh, “God, you should see Pepper’s office.”  
\-----  
After everything happened and Natasha explained herself to Pepper and things were starting to cool down as much as things around Stark ever did, Pepper was still CEO. Pepper was by some miracle also still talking to both Natasha and Stark himself. Pepper had invited Natasha to stop by the office before leaving for lunch at one of Pepper’s favorite restaurants for a work-day lunch.  
Natasha entered the once familiar office to find that everything had been changed. Pepper’s kinetic sculpture had been removed, but more importantly her desk had been removed in favor of a different glass and chrome construction that looked like it walked right off the set for Star Trek. Of course it was the series of hovering holo-projections rather than screens which really changed up the desk space. It must be admitted that the way the blue of the projections reflected off the chrome legs of the desk was lovely though.  
“I see Stark did a little redecorating,” Natasha commented taking in the desk as Pepper casually flicked her hand and everything closed down into neat little piles.  
“This was after I stopped him too. He was talking about hard-light something-or-other,” Pepper admitted as she stood from behind the desk and briskly straightened her blazer and skirt. They hadn’t particularly needed the extra straightening, but it was such a Pepper thing to do that Natasha simply smiled.  
\-----  
"That's fine," Maria said her voice a clear dismissal.   
“I’ve got a new phone, I assume you have as well?” Natasha asked, although it wasn’t much of a question when she already knew the answer.  
“StarkPhone?” Maria asked not looking up from where a document on her desk was distracting her.  
“It’s the safest model for adding extra encryption,” Natasha replied.  
“Stark gave me a phone when he hired me. I routed it and completely rewrote the code. I think he might still be pouting over that,” Maria replied finally looking up. Her face was lit up in a smile that Natasha had never seen outside of the company of her closest friends.  
“Sound like Stark. Here, give me something to write down my new number on,” Natasha said purposefully ignoring the internal realization that without SHIELD Natasha and Maria could become friends on that level. And that was scaring the shit out of her since Natasha had had perhaps a dozen friends in her whole life.  
Maria pulled a phone from her pocket and opened it up before handing it to Natasha.  
“Just put yourself in as a new contact, I’ll text you later so you’ll have mine,” Maria told her and, with the same smile, turned back to her work.  
Natasha entered her new number and said goodbye, which was acknowledged with a vague hand wave, and she left Maria’s office.  
Stark had an eye for modern architecture. No one could ever really say otherwise, although from Stella’s comments she was rather less than enthused. Of course Stella’s art tended to have more flowing curves and soft natural tones than Starks aesthetic. Stark was all about things that looked like they were smart enough to start talking to you (and with JARVIS installed, the building certainly was). Stella had shared some of her old paintings from the couple of classes she took before the war started and they were a mixture of soft landscapes and sharp cityscapes and the detailed geography of faces she saw every day. Stella’s work had been stunning and the admission that she hadn’t been able to really do much artwork since she woke was heartbreaking.  
As Natasha’s thoughts wandered she was only half aware of the people passing her by. She didn’t even see Pepper until the woman was right in front of her.  
“Natasha! What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Pepper asked as soon as she was in a reasonable distance and wouldn’t have to yell.  
“I didn’t know I was coming,” Natasha admitted. Pepper was as put together and professional as always.  
“Well, I’m sure that now that you’re here you won’t mind coming with me to dinner?” Pepper said with a bright smile on her face.  
Natasha could never quite figure out how Pepper could be both so open and so secretive.  
\-----  
Three months after Natasha and Pepper made up, lunch every Tuesday was a routine. Natasha had to switch to a different day a few times because of missions, but Tuesdays were Natasha and Pepper days. They had a circling schedule of lunch locations, most of them in New York (Pepper was supervising much of the construction on Stark Tower and spent most of her time in New York), but a few locations in DC where Natasha was currently working from, and two in Malibu where Pepper was working on moving out of her apartment in favor of moving into Stark’s rebuilt and remodeled house. At least Stark was supervising that construction.  
Their lunch that day was in New York at a small pizza place that Stark had taken Pepper to years ago when Pepper was just his Personal Assistant. It had become one of her favorite places and she knew every waiter and waitress in the place and every one of them knew her and what she tended to order.  
After they put in their orders Natasha and Pepper sat back to really relax.  
“You know, I don’t think I ever believed that this is where my life would be,” Pepper finally said as she sipped at her water. She was looking wistful and beautiful in the light leaking through the windows from the other side of the room.  
“I know that I didn’t think I would be here by this point in my life,” Natasha replied. She had a bottle of beer and front of her, and while she would normally get a beer when hanging around with Clint, today she wanted just the flavor of alcohol. The last week had been immensely frustrating and stressful and while she couldn’t get drunk she liked to pretend she could sometimes.  
“Where did you think you would be then?” Pepper asked leaning forward just the smallest amount. Pepper was a woman who could control her impulses she never had to give herself away, she chose to do so when she was with people she trusted and cared for.  
“Honestly? Dead,” Natasha had to pause at the appalled look on her friend’s face. Perhaps she didn’t control every impulse, simply most of them. “In my line of work and history I didn’t think I would live to twenty let alone eighty-two.”  
There was a long pause, as Pepper rested her head further into her hand and examined Natasha more intensely than she ever had before in the entire time that they had known each other.  
“This is some new information,” Pepper finally said.  
Natasha didn’t have time to reply because at that moment she caught sight of their waitress approaching from the kitchen with their lunches.  
After the waitress had checked on them and then left them to their private lunch, Natasha finally replied.  
“I was trained as a child,” Natasha started, her voice soft and careful that it would not carry to the next table over. “As all child soldiers, I was not willing, and those in charge of me did as they would with me. As you might expect from post-World War Two Russia, I was an experiment as much as a soldier or a spy. As such I was given a number of serums and strange formulas, and as a result I mostly stopped aging. Or I age so slowly that it does not seem as if time touches me.”  
There was a long silence.  
“You’ve just told me your biggest secret,” Pepper finally said. It wasn’t a question,and Natasha didn’t bother to respond. Instead she wrapped her pasta around her fork and started actually eating. Pepper followed in her footsteps and they were quiet as they ate. Pepper finally put her fork down and simply looked at Natasha for a long time.  
“I suppose as a super-spy you know that I have secrets,” Pepper finally said.  
“I’ve never pried further than to ensure that you were not associated with any terrorist or espionage organizations of any kind. The rest was your business,” Natasha told her quietly. She could have dug, she probably should have dug deeper, but some people deserved to keep their secrets.  
“Yes, but you knew there was more,” Pepper said her voice so soft even Natasha could barely hear her.  
“I did.”  
“My parents did not name me Pepper, they didn’t even name me Virginia. I changed my name when I turned eighteen.” Natasha didn’t say anything. This was one of those moments where you had to let things out at your own pace, prodding wouldn’t help.  
“My parents named me Valentine. I went by Val as a child and teenager and I changed my name as soon as I moved out of the house. I had never been the little boy Valentine my parents wanted, and they didn’t want a little girl named Val. So I became neither,” The words were forced from Pepper is soft whispers across their table. It was a story Natasha had seen before. It was a story hidden in half told truths, the kinds of things she had never said before. Of said only in confidence in private places. “But I found after starting work for Tony that I wasn’t Virginia either, and he called me Pepper and finally there was a name to fit the person who I was.”  
\-----  
“There are certainly no better plans that I could have,” Natasha replied.  
“Good, then we’ll just stop by my office for my purse and be on our way to dinner then,” Pepper replied and gestured for Natasha to follow.


	7. Avengers

Of course their girl’s night out was interrupted by Tony Stark himself climbing into the elevator while speaking to JARVIS.  
“...definitely the right phone number. You’re sure he’s not going to answer? Oh, hey Pepp -- Oh! Natalie, just the woman I wanted to see.”  
“Stark,” Natasha said in simple acknowledgement.  
“Right, so, you of course know Bruce is living here now, and I’m pretty sure that Barton is semi-homeless, so I need you to give me his number so I can offer him a floor here,” Stark said speaking quickly. “Also, I’ve got a whole floor for the Capsicle and I need to know if his flyboy buddy needs a floor too.”  
“Clint owns an apartment building, Steve and Sam are in Russia for at least a couple more days and I know that Sam has a house,” Natasha replied cutting him down as quickly as she could.  
“Hey, JARVIS drop us on Floor 6B,” Tony said instead of replying to Natasha. The elevator rose another three floors before stopping and opening onto what was clearly a living space. There was a soft looking black microsuede couch with throw pillows in gold and red with hourglass shapes like the buckle of her uniform belt. There was a massive TV across from them, a small bar in the corner and an open style kitchen done with black cabinets and white granite. The appliances looked like they were smarter than her.  
“I divided the building into sections and the top residential area is section 6, each floor in that section has a letter,” Stark explained gesturing Natasha and Pepper off the elevator. “This is floor B, as in Black Widow. Upstairs is floor C, for Captain America, and downstairs is floor H, for Hawkeye.”  
“You devoted an entire floor to each of us?” Natasha asked looking around the room. It wasn’t actually to her taste, but it looked like what one might expect the taste of a spy best known for honeypot operations. It was dark but sophisticated and elegant. Natasha would have prefered soft cotton couches and bright cabinets, and soft quilts, but it was a lovely apartment.  
“Yeah , well some of the conference rooms on the lower floors got cut in half so I could put offices in, but yeah, I have eleven floors for living areas at the top of the tower,” Stark said rambling on as Natasha tuned him out. She wandered further into the apartment and ignored Stark’s voice babbling onwards about interior design and color palates.   
The kitchen, it turned out, was fully stocked with everything she could possibly want or need to cook a meal. The entire apartment it turned out was completely stocked, as Natasha discovered when she ventured back past the the living room and down the hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms. Because of course there were multiples; three bedrooms and just as many bathrooms.   
One was obviously the master and in it Natasha found a closet with a collection of clothes in her size ranging from simple to business to sexy. Of course Stark hadn’t thought to include sweats or yoga pants despite the pile of lacy underwear which Natasha would never choose to wear outside of a honeypot operation. Normally she wore the simplest undergarments which she could get to fit her neatly. Catsuits were not forgiving.   
The attached master bath was stocked with a million smells of every possible bath product you could think of. They were in a mixture of soft floral scents and vanilla, which was surprisingly on the dot for what she used when she could afford to smell like anything for her missions. Soft and non-offensive to the level that no one would ever remark on the smell of her perfume, but would never note that she didn’t have a scent either. The bath products were so thoughtful that she found herself reconsidering Stark just a little bit. After all, her perfumes were intended not to be noticed.  
Natasha made her way back out into the living room where Stark and Pepper were waiting for her.  
Natasha didn’t immediately say anything, just glancing around at the framed black and white photos on the walls.  
“So?” Stark finally said cutting into the vaguely awkward silence.  
“I’m impressed by some of your thoughtfulness, and rather depressed by the dark colors, but, overall? It’s nice,” Natasha finally said.  
“So?” Stark said more emphatically. Natasha knew what he wanted. He wanted a response of whether or not she was moving in and if so, whether or not she would help him get the band back together.  
“So, I think it’s time for Pepper and I to get going for our girl’s night out,” Natasha said catching Stark’s eyes and then purposefully looking past him to Pepper. The other woman was looking amused with the game Natasha was playing with Stark’s emotions. Pepper seemed aware that at this point Natasha was mostly just stringing Stark along, and that she would eventually move in and likely drag Clint and Stella along.  
Natasha and Pepper got on the elevator going down and left Stark gaping at them and looking confused. Almost as soon as the elevator closed Natasha and Pepper broke down giggling.  
“JARVIS?” Pepper finally said after calming herself down. “Natasha will be staying with us, at least tonight, so please ensure that Tony doesn’t do anything drastic to the apartment which can’t be completed in an hour.”  
“Of course, Ms. Potts,” JARVIS replied and Natasha smiled. She had gotten used to JARVIS when she was working undercover at Stark Industries, and she had actually missed him a little bit.  
“Just distract him with an experiment of some kind,” Natasha offered.  
“Certainly, Ms. Romanov,” JARVIS replied and Natasha could hear the implied smile in the warmth of his voice.  
Natasha and Pepper left the tower arm-in-arm and smiling as they chattered about inconsequentials. Celebrity gossip, news about Stark Industries stock prices, and little stories about their mutual acquaintances were the subject rather than the fall of SHIELD or the whereabouts of the rest of the Avengers. They continued to keep things light all through dinner and dessert and a final glass of wine apiece. It was on the way back to Stark Tower that the subjects got more serious.  
“Are you going to move in?” Pepper asked. There was a tone to her voice which said that she had been holding that question since they got onto the elevator.   
“I don’t know yet,” Natasha admitted, “I think it will depend on speaking to Clint and Steve and what they’re going to do now. If they both take up Stark’s offer, I will too.”  
“And you’ll be staying here until they make some decisions?” Pepper asked in the tone of voice that said it was barely even a question.  
“I certainly don’t have anywhere better to be,” Natasha said as she gave Pepper a look to take the sting out of it.  
“I’m glad, it will be nice to have another woman around the upper levels of the Tower,” Pepper replied.  
They fell into silence and finished their walk back to the tower. The reception area on the bottom floor was deserted by the time they got back, and JARVIS greeted them as soon as they walked in the building.  
“Welcome back Ms. Potts, Ms. Romanov. Master Stark is currently in his lab, and he spent only half an hour rearranging apartment 6B.”  
“Thank you JARVIS,” Pepper said and lead Natasha onto the elevator.  
As the doors shut it was clear that Pepper’s attention was on Natasha and not JARVIS as she spoke again, “I’ll keep Tony busy till midday tomorrow, keep him out of your hair.”  
“Thank you, I’ll get ahold of the rest of the team tomorrow, see if anyone other than Stark feels a need to get the band back together.”  
“Good night,” Pepper said softly as the elevator opened onto the living room of Natasha’s apartment.  
\---  
The next morning Natasha called Stella as she sat at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cheerios and feeling downright domestic. Natasha left the phone on speaker, and it sounded like Stella had done the same wherever she was.  
“So, I’m in New York, in Stark’s tower of all places,” Natasha said.  
“Yeah, I thought you were meeting up with Clint?” Stella said loudly, like she was in a loud place. Unfortunately the StarkPhone had been engineered to cut out background noise, so Stella just sounded loud.  
“I was going to, but I ran into Maria, and she’s working at SI, so I came across Pepper and Stark happened. So I haven’t had a chance to call him,” Natasha told her while laughing a little at the way she phrased it. It was so vague, but Stella was just making affirmative noises on the other side of the phone.  
“Well, that’s what Starks do I suppose, they just get in the way of any plans you might already have,” Stella said getting a little quieter. Natasha could see in her mind’s eye Stella as she moved away from a crowd and dropping her voice.  
“Right, and this one wants to get the band back together,” Natasha replied.  
“You mean the Avengers?” Stella must be by herself because she was pitching her voice in a higher and more feminine way.  
“Yeah, Stark wants all of the Avengers to come live in his tower, he’s got a whole floor for each of us,” Natasha tells her, “It’s almost like he wants to have an all-day-everyday sleepover. I’m half expecting an invitation to make a pillow fort.”  
“Really?What did he do?” Stella asked brightly.  
“Well, I complained about my apartment, because it’s all black, and I know I’ve never told him that yellow is my favorite color or anything, but everything in black? Does anyone like that?”  
“My apartment is probably covered in antiques from the thirties and forties then,” Stella said sadly.  
“Probably, Stark is depressingly literal sometimes,” Natasha commiserated, “But anyways, I complained about it and when I came back all the sheets had been switched out with these soft baby blue ones, and the throw pillows were all in blues and greens. It was quite the transformation for half an hour.”  
“Really? You complained and the man just...what? changed all the cosmetics without another thought?”  
“Pretty much. The man never does things by half. I expect by the end of the day he’ll be switching out the black cabinets for something else entirely. Maybe I can talk him into some modern cabinets, a couple of yellow accent ones.”  
“Well, good luck with talking Stark into anything,” Stella said with a laugh.  
“How do you feel about coming back across the pond?” Natasha asked gently.  
There was a long moment of silence before Stella finally answered, “I think I’ve followed every track to its end over here. It might be time.”  
“Well, Stark has an almost undoubtedly tacky apartment for you,” Natasha offered playfully.  
“I might take him up on that. I’ll text you my schedule once I’ve bought my ticket,” Stella said quietly.  
“I’ll come pick you up, offer support against the potential for crazy that comes with Stark,” Natasha said.  
“I look forward to it, bye.”  
“Till later, bye.”  
Natasha hung up the phone and carried her bowl to the sink. She had barely set it down when JARVIS made himself known, “Ms. Romanov, Master Stark wishes to see you.”  
“I suppose you can send him down,” Natasha said with a sigh, “Go ahead and tell him that Steve will be on his way back to New York soon.”  
“Master Stark is on his way.”  
Natasha poured herself a cup of orange juice and sat down on the sofa surrounded by fluffy blue and green throw pillows. As she waited for Stark to appear in the elevator she examined some of the pillows more closely. It was strange, but some of the pillows buried in the back were frothy confections with lace and ribbons, and Natasha couldn’t help but wonder where on earth Stark had found those in half an hour.  
Given what Stark had come up with in half an hour the night before, Nataasha was utterly unsurprised that Stark came off the elevator with a cart full of stuff. There were frames and vases and stacks of dishes and a pile of fabric, all the breakables wrapped up for their own protection. Everything Natasha could see was in some sea tone: blue, green, or gentle purples.  
“So, I’ve come bearing gifts,” Stark said cheerfully as he wheeled the cart into the middle of the living room. “No blacks at all.”  
“While I’m thankful for the lack of blacks, you didn’t think to ask me what I wanted?” Natasha asked without moving from where she was cradled by piles of pillows.  
Stark paused for a second in the middle of unwrapping a super modern looking sculpture that was silver and turquoise.  
“...No, I didn’t,” Stark admitted looking like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar and crumbs on his face. Natasha just raised her eyebrow and waited for Stark to think to actually ask her. She wasn’t going to do his work for him.  
“So...what do you like then?” Stark asked.  
“Well, I think some sleeker cabinets would be nice, maybe a yellow accent cabinet,” Natasha suggested, then as she thought she slowly continued, “I like warm browns and woods, maybe some gentle oranges, natural colors, like the turn from summer to fall.”  
“Basically nothing on this cart is your style then,” Stark said looking sadly at the cart in front of him.  
“No, but anything purple can go into Clint’s apartment and Steve likes turquoise, so it’s not a total loss,” Natasha felt a little guilty springing this on Stark now instead of giving him a few details the night before.  
“Purple for Katniss?” Stark asked looking away from Natasha to examine the haul of things on the cart again. She could see the cogs in his head jumping into high gear as he reworked the designs for Natasha and Clint and probably everyone else on the team.  
“Yeah, Clint will wear anything provided it’s purple,” Natasha informed him.  
This was a turning point moment. Natasha knew it was coming as soon as Stark offered her this apartment, as soon as she decided to stay the night, as soon as she decided to call Clint and Stella. The moment she decided to let herself be a part of this team, helped Stark bring the team back together in a more permanent way. And being a part of a team meant trusting people again. It wasn’t like Clint who she learned to trust from the beginning. Stark was someone who she was wary of trusting, because she knew that he didn’t trust her.  
Natasha continued, “I once talked Clint into a lavender dress. He was really quite lovely.”  
“Oh god, that’s an image,” Stark said laughing.  
“I’ll have to track down the image. I took a picture for blackmail purposes, but Clint wasn’t ashamed of it. He was just into it!” Natasha replied sinking further into the pillows.  
“Well, you look comfortable at least,” Stark said taking in Natasha and the way she was surrounded by pillows and the couch was almost swallowing her.  
“Yes, it’s the perfect number of pillows. So you’re always welcome to just cover my apartment with pillows and cushions,” Natasha told him forcing herself to him a genuine smile instead of one of her staged smiles which he had always seen before this point.  
“Your apartment,” Stark said slowly, “And JARVIS says that Capsicle is on his way. Sooooooo…”  
Natasha just stares at him as he drags out the sound. She suddenly grins and exclaims, “The band’s getting back together.” Stark is suddenly the middle of a flurry of movement as he rewrapped the statue, and backed out of the room and headed back to the elevator, “Get Robin Hood in the building!” He called as he steered the cart back into the elevator. The doors closed on him manically grinning.  
Natasha sits in silence staring at the closed elevator for a long moment before she finally looks up at the ceiling, “I think Pepper should be warned what state Stark is in.”  
“Already done, Ms. Romanov,” JARVIS replied cooly.  
“You’re always looking out for the ladies aren’t you?” Natasha asked feeling like she was having a conversation with Sam or Phil, one of her male friends.  
“I take care of all of the inhabitants of Stark Tower,” JARVIS replied and Natasha smiled. JARVIS continued, “However, given Master Stark’s eccentricities I find that Ms. Potts, Ms. Hill, and yourself are more in need of ‘looking out for’ than most of Master Stark’s employees or Masters Banner and Rhodes.”  
“That’s so sweet of you JARVIS,” she said still tilting her head upwards. JARVIS’s speakers were embedded into the ceilings, and although the cameras and sensors which allowed JARVIS to fully interact with the people in the tower were scattered at a number of heights and angles, it was the speakers which seemed more like a part of JARVIS himself.  
Natasha continued, “I think I should call Clint before Stark gets too wound up, Maybe he’ll go down a little lighter if I don’t let him get too excited about the team getting back together.”  
“Of course, Ms. Romanov,” JARVIS replied before falling silent.  
Natasha stood and took her empty glass into the kitchen before grabbing up her phone again and dialing Clint’s number.The phone rang long enough that Natasha was quite sure that Clint had once again lost a phone. But eventually Clint answers sounding out of breath and rushed, “Hey?”  
“Clint, it’s Natasha,” she said calmly, and she could hear the smile in his voice when he replied.  
“It’s good to hear from you,” he said.  
“I’m back in New York now, Steve says hi,” Natasha told him.  
“Is Steve in New York?”  
“No, no, I saw Steve in Russia. He was tracking some leads on his boy, and I was checking out memory lane.”  
“Okay, sound about right,” Clint paused, “Well, I’m in New York right now too. Want to meet for coffee?”  
“Actually, Stark has a proposition for you. Do you want to meet at Stark Tower?” Natasha offered.  
“Yeah, okay, I can get to Manhattan in...thirty minutes? Might be less, traffic is unpredictable.”  
“Are you driving in New York?”  
“No, but sometimes you can’t squeeze yourself onto the subway because it’s just too crammed. I’ll see.”  
“Alright, well when you get here I’m sure that JARVIS will see you up, and I’ll make sure that Stark knows that you’re on your way,” Natasha said.  
“Alright I’ll see you later.”  
“Bye”  
\---  
Three hours later the elevator opened and Clint came out looking stunned.  
“Like the apartment?” Natasha asked looking over the back of the couch at Clint.  
“It’s not really you though,” Clint said looking around a little, “I mean it’s all black. Like everything is black.”  
“Not these throw pillows,” Natasha offered with a smirk.  
“No, but that’s not your color palate either. I mean, Barney and Laura would be all over it. but not you.”  
“Stark has been informed, I think he’s online ordering pillows as we speak,” Natasha offered as Clint wandered further into the apartment and flopping himself down onto Natasha’s couch.  
“Yeah, he said he was in the middle of redesigning my apartment already, and I told him furniture that looks worn in would make me more comfortable,” Clint told her. He was still looking around the apartment and not meeting Natasha’s eyes. She let him, because Clint liked to really observe his surroundings fully whenever possible. “I think he had a heart attack when I mentioned used furniture, so I let that idea go.”  
“So you’re staying?”  
“Yeah, and Steve and his new flying buddy are on their way right?”  
“It looks like it.”  
“Then the band’s back together, isn’t it?”  
\---  
It was almost a week later that Natasha met Stella and Sam at the airport. They were both looking almost absurdly happy and holding hands. Natasha didn’t know, and didn’t need to know, what had happened since she left them, but it looked like a get together.  
“Natasha!” Stella looked excited and she released Sam’s hand to rush Natasha and hug her. It was a lot more open that the other woman had been in their entire acquaintance, so whatever went down between Stella and Sam, it was good for Stella.  
“Hey sweetie,” Natasha said gently into Stella’s chest. It was loud enough that Stella could hear it, but no one else could.  
Stella released Natasha and stepped away, “So, we’re off to Stark Tower now?”  
“Yeah,” Natasha replied and started walking towards baggage claim, Stella and Sam just a couple steps behind. Natasha turned her head to look at Stella as she walked. “Stark is talking about renaming the tower since we’re all moving in. He hasn’t put the new logo up yet, but he’s talking about just doing the A, and calling it Avengers Tower.”  
“Sounds good to me, less egomaniacal,” Sam said calmly as he trailed just behind the two women.  
“You going to join the Avengers, Sam?” Natasha asked turning her head and smirking just a little bit, “I’m sure Stark would be happy to design a new set of wings for you.”  
“Nah, I’ll leave the superheroing to you two,” Sam said with a smile of his own.  
The three of them continued to chatter about inconsequentials while waiting for their luggage and all the way to Stark Tower. They were greeted in the lobby by the rest of the boys and Pepper.  
Stark immediately grabbed hold of Sam and dragged him off to talk about his wings. He wasn’t taking Sam’s indifference to superheroing as an answer either. Whether Sam wanted them or not he was going to get a new set of wings. The thought of that made Natasha smile just as much as Pepper and Stella’s quiet but excited conversation and the way Bruce wandered over to try to drag Tony off of Sam, but somehow just got roped into the conversation. Clint drifted over to Natasha and they started talking about the improvements Clint was doing to one of his guest bedrooms to make it into a game room.  
The whole lot of them got into the elevator, sort of squashed together, but cheerful and chatting with each other in three conversations which met each other and split and the lot of them were a single unit. Maria stepped on part way up and became a part of the group without any effort.  
They all got out on the living floor which had been destroyed in the Battle of New York and was rebuilt to become a common space for the Avengers team. Natasha sat herself onto the couch with Stark on one side and Clint on the other. The team was all together again.  
And they were a team. They had trust with each other, Natasha had found herself talking with Stark and Banner over the last few weeks and letting them see pieces of her actual self. It was strange for her to realize as she sat there, with everyone talking around her, that they were all friends. She cared more for Stella and Pepper and Clint, of course, but Stark and Banner and Sam and Maria were all friends as well.  
For the first time in her life she was fully surrounded by friends and she could trust every one of them. It wasn’t just four people she trusted in a sea of faces, like at SHIELD. It was tight little group where she could trust every one of them with her life, but also her secrets. Secrets she had never even told Fury or Phil.  
So this was who she was with every single cover she ever had blown wide open.   
She was an Avenger.


End file.
